A service-oriented approach to organisation design
Service design helps us to understand, improve or rethink end-to-end services, starting with the user.
When thinking about ‘users’ this can mean a range of different people. This includes citizens and sometimes customers (people who choose to pay for services). Additionally, it also includes staff and employees inside organisations. Services can be internal and/or external facing, and applying the same approaches and mindset to service design can work for all types of services.
A service-led or service-oriented approach is an effective way of organising change and managing priorities inside organisations. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. However, aligning how an organisation works to the services it delivers – using this as an organising principle – is the most effective way to keep a clear focus on user needs, goals and delivering better outcomes.
Understanding organising principles
Over the past few decades, alternative approaches to organising a business might have meant coordinating around technology or business processes. Being technology-oriented is starting with technology and systems. Think of Office 365 as a service, rather than starting with the needs and goals of someone who needs tools and software to do their job. Meanwhile, process-oriented organisations optimise products and services around existing operational processes and structures. This will mean traditional components of business-as-usual and optimising for how things have always worked or been structured – it could also be an indicator of a lack of deliberate or conscious choices inside these organisations. Think traditional management structures for people (HR), and technology (IT). User-focused, design and more agile mindsets have always struggled to add substantial value to these traditional, process-driven types of business environments.
A shift in technology thinking
The spirit of technology is optimisation. This is what makes technologies cheaper, faster, and most of all, scalable. It’s what’s so attractive about technology as an organising principle. The problem is that this gets detached from outcomes.
In contrast, the spirit of being service-oriented is equity. Yes, optimisation is important, as is scale and sustainability. But not at the expense of improved outcomes for everyone. This might mean the flexibility of service models to provide types of support for groups of people with different sets of needs, rather than a one-size-fits-all model, or an over-reliance on digital channels.
When working on public services this has to be a priority. A service-oriented approach is a way of being user-centred. It means providing services that use the right technologies, but carefully integrated as part of human systems. Making this shift means putting user needs and goals at the centre of the vision, culture and operations of the organisation. Then, making sure everyone owns and advocates for it, so user needs drive technology and decisions.
A service-oriented approach recognises that we’re working in a new era of (digital) technology and this gives us a platform to build from. This way decisions about what is the best solution for users of services and technology decisions become intertwined. A shift from enterprise tech (tech-led) to digital tech (service-led).
Taking a service-oriented approach
A service-oriented taxonomy was first developed by Kate Tarling — A common language to understand services (2017). Simple frameworks like this can be used to understand how larger services are made up of smaller services (sub-services) and products, followed by the types of activities and capabilities that exist or need to exist to support them, all built on a foundation of technology and data.
This is service design working through questions that need to be answered in every part of how a service is built, scaled and maintained. It doesn’t discount technology, data or processes – these are all important components. But it starts with what really needs to happen around people’s needs or goals within a service. This way we can design entire organisations towards meeting those needs. If we start at the bottom of this ‘stack’ with data or technology, then we’re a long way removed from the people we’re designing and running services for.
To work in this way you first need to understand and define what your services are, both externally and internally to your organisation. A good way to consider this is to think about how people access your services. First suggested by Lou Downe, think of good services as verbs (2015) – it’s important not to make people work to understand your existing language, processes and structures in how you start to define and name your services.
Starting with a clear view of your services, it’s possible to support new ways of working, culture and behaviours across an organisation. All of this brings together a service-oriented approach to designing future, more cost-effective and sustainable organisations, and the ambition needed to deliver significant improvements and better outcomes.
A version of this post was first published on Medium as part of the FutureGov blog (2018). I updated elements of the content and external links in June 2025.
Further related reading to service-oriented approaches on the archived FutureGov blog:
- Understanding your services (2019)
- Designing services with life events (2019)
- How to prioritise your services (2019)
This is my blog where I’ve been writing for 20 years. You can follow all of my posts by subscribing to this RSS feed. You can also find me on Bluesky and LinkedIn.