Create/Change is working with NHSE’s Digital Prevention Services portfolio to support a transformation from project-based delivery to a product-led model. We’re helping to establish foundational practices, increase capability, and improve governance in a high-accountability, safety-critical area.
What we’ve done
Our first job was to work with the National Screening SLT to establish a delivery baseline and structure. This included mapping the digital product estate across the Screening portfolio—ownership, stage, risk, and delivery approach—designing and implementing a shared dashboard to enable portfolio-level visibility and governance for the first time, and introducing product roadmaps, design principles, and OKRs to support prioritisation and track delivery against objectives. This improved planning discipline, reduced duplication, and enabled better allocation of effort across the portfolio, demonstrating a clear change in ways of working across a large, complex public sector organisation and supporting more effective service ownership.
We worked alongside NHSE product and delivery leads, coaching on agile delivery, stakeholder engagement, prioritisation, and transitioning to a product-led approach. This included structuring product visions and value propositions aligned to user and organisational outcomes, delivering in iterations with regular playback and feedback loops, and engaging clinical, Information Governance, and policy stakeholders early to reduce delivery risk. Seven NHSE leads were supported through live project work. All now deliver using roadmaps and apply consistent approaches to scoping, engagement, and iteration.
Ultimately, the goal is to help the Screening SLT to adapt their operating model and governance to enable iterative delivery. This included co-developing a portfolio-level OKR framework aligned to strategic priorities, introducing roadmap-based reporting to support investment and risk decisions, and coaching senior staff in interpreting delivery data to make prioritisation decisions.
Our team also advised on strategy and planning across adjacent portfolios, including developing a logic model and monetised benefits framework to support prioritisation of digital interventions in Personalised Prevention and Digital Diagnostics and Therapeutics portfolios, contributing evidence for inclusion in NHSE’s Spending Review planning, and assessing commercial options for Digital Diagnostics and Therapeutics integration with NHSE products and services—covering routes to market, contractual flexibility, regulatory pathway, resource requirements and potential monetised benefits of use-cases. This created an evidence base linking policy ambition, delivery feasibility, and investment decisions across national portfolios.
We developed engagement with Trust stakeholders expected to deliver care pathway changes, including presenting emerging service models to national groups for feedback on feasibility and integration. This surfaced risks early and aligned expectations with product development.
Internally, we ran the first all-portfolio away day for over 300 Screening staff. The event focused on delivery alignment and shared principles. We also developed a staff survey on cultural health and psychological safety, now used by NHSE’s People and Transformation team to guide workforce planning.
We worked with Clinical Safety and Information Governance teams to unblock assurance barriers—surfacing risks earlier, agreeing compliant iteration routes to accelerate delivery.
Outcomes
- All screening digital products now mapped and governed using a shared dashboard
- Product ownership, roadmaps, and OKRs introduced across the portfolio
- 7 NHS product/delivery leads coached in live environments and using iterative methods
- Strategic frameworks delivered for investment, procurement and prioritisation
- Trust-level engagement integrated into early-stage delivery planning
- Governance routines now based on delivery data, not static project milestones
- Provided a replicable model for capability-led transformation in other NHSE portfolios
