Designing Delivery: Rethinking IT in the Digital Service Economy

Now that we’re moving from a product economy to a digital service economy, software is becoming critical for navigating our everyday lives. The quality of your service depends on how well it helps customers accomplish goals and satisfy needs. Service quality is not about designing capabilities, but about making—and keeping—promises to customers.

To help you improve customer satisfaction and create positive brand experiences, this pragmatic book introduces a transdisciplinary approach to digital service delivery. Designing a resilient service today requires a unified effort across front-office and back-office functions and technical and business perspectives. You’ll learn how make IT a full partner in the ongoing conversations you have with your customers.

• Take a unique customer-centered approach to the entire service delivery lifecycle
• Apply this perspective across development, operations, QA, design, project management, and marketing
• Implement a specific quality assurance methodology that unifies those disciplines
• Use the methodology to achieve true resilience, not just stability

Table of Contents

Part I. Post-Industrial IT
Chapter 1. From Industrialism to Post-Industrialism
Chapter 2. A New Model of Control
Chapter 3. IT as Conversational Medium
Chapter 4. Designing for Failure, Operating to Learn
Chapter 5. The Journey Is the Destination

Part II. Continuous Quality
Chapter 6. A New Definition of Quality
Chapter 7. The Four Dimensions of Digital Service
Chapter 8. Building Quality In
Chapter 9. From Quality Assurance to Quality Advocacy

Part III. A Language for Continuous Design
Chapter 10. The Mirror of Empathy
Chapter 11. Service as a Chain of Promises
Chapter 12. Promising a Good Night’s Sleep: The Digitally Infused Hotel
Chapter 13. Brands as Promise-Marks
Chapter 14. Thinking in Promises