Writing useful production-quality software is hard. It's easy enough to knock a simple proof-of-concept together in a weekend but once you have to make it robust things get a little more complicated. You have to start tackling questions like: does it perform well enough? What happens if the database goes down? Are there any security vulnerabilities? And then the less technical (but just as important) questions, like can people figure out how to use it? Can a colour blind person use it? Can a visually or mobility impaired person use it? And perhaps the most important question of all, does anyone even want to?

I've recently started working with the Digital Transformation Office (DTO), who are tackling all of these problems and more in the Australian federal government. The DTO have come up with a system for creating new services (the Digital Service Standard) that will help ensure all new projects address these questions at the right time to produce a more robust, secure service that meets the needs of the users. While particularly interesting in the government context, many of the Digital Service Standard principles can be generally applied to all software projects and I will be running through some of the more interesting takeaways of the standard.