Whose application is it anyway?

Building products for everyone in the UK health and care system

4 December 2025

Introduction

I want to tell a story
It’s about ending up in the middle of two things- data science and digital
I naively launched in the wrong direction and have beeen redirecting since
I’m not an expert in anything I talk about today- if you’re doing something big ask an expert

The story

I lead a team that built a demand and capacity model for the New Hospital Programme
It’s a simulation model that predicts demand for acute care in c. 2041
There’s a huge amount of analytical work on and around the model
We have produced lots of whizzy reports and dashboards to assist with parameter setting and results interpretation

The problem

We did everything we were supposed to and people were happy with the model. But there were issues
User feedback and prioritisation of developments were ad-hoc
Programmes of work were siloed
The needs of different bugfixes and improvements were considered in isolation
The connection between different deliverables was poorly understood

Where next?

I wanted somebody to work across all of the different streams of work
They would consider the work programme as a whole and help to prioritise
We started to think, really think of individuals interacting with our model, inside and outside the unit, as users

Another story

This is someone else’s story
It has a real resonance with an age old problem in analytics- nobody uses our dashboards!
The results that the intervention produced were profound but come from a world I knew nothing about two years ago

The solution - product

Source: Oscar G Torres

What is product?

Project management is all about delivering a thing
You can be agile and iterate on the thing
You can do waterfall and spec a thing and then do it
Product management is about Why and What

Back to the other person’s story

They introduced the disciplines of product into their team building PowerBI stuff
Specifically:
- Product management; Product design; Developer; User researcher; Delivery manager
Excellent results on engagement with outputs was immediate

Next steps

Staff found their roles were too broad
It was challenging from a skills and workload point of view
Root and branch change of job roles and JDs with the willing participation of all staff

End result

Their work is transformed- roughly a third of the staff are involved in:
- Product management
- Design
- User research
And they could do more given time and resources- this work is not “one and done”

Back to my story

We’ve been working on adding product roles for the last year
Two full time roles (and me chipping in)
Many things have worked really well
Some things we are still working on

Product versus delivery

Separating the why from the how
It’s a really specific and clear example of “Involve us at the start”
People work better with clear roles and clear responsibilities
Build a group of people who know why and a group who know how

Agile

Customers talk waterfall but behave agile
Agility is a mindset, a mode of practice
Being agile is all about being able to review and make decisions frequently
But it isn’t about changing what you’re doing all the time
Good code and good teams are ready to change direction- whether they change or not

Money for old rope

This is old news to digital people
Data science and analytics are expanding
We’re reinventing the wheel
But these methods are being looked at by other teams
- And I think we really do need to reinvent the wheel

Data science and analytics is entering its Max Power stage

The wrong way… But faster!

Tying threads

We need to listen and learn from agile and product colleagues in digital
But I also think we need to make these methods our own
Let’s do it together 🙂