A 60-Minute Service Lifecycle Check-In for Charities

One service, one honest conversation

Charity teams are under pressure to do more, faster – often across multiple services at once. You don’t always have the time or headspace for a full redesign. But you can make space for one honest conversation.

This practical 60-minute service lifecycle check-in for charities is built to fit inside busy diaries. You can run with your team, using the four-stage service lifecycle – Discover & Define, Design & Test, Deliver & Improve, Retire & Renew.

Use it to:

✅ spot where a service is quietly wobbling

✅ agree 1–3 practical next steps

✅ make better use of your service owners and their one-page profiles.

What is a service lifecycle check-in?

A service lifecycle check-in is a short, structured conversation where you look at one service across all four stages of its lifecycle:

1. Discover & Define – the need and purpose

2. Design & Test – what you’re trying or changing

3. Deliver & Improve – how it works day to day

4. Retire & Renew – whether it’s still the best use of energy

Instead of diving straight into solutions, you walk through each stage, capture what’s really happening, and come out with a clear tilt: grow, steady, pivot or retire.

When charities should use a 60-minute service lifecycle check-in

This works best when:

• A service feels fragile – lots of firefighting, unclear decisions, exhausted staff or volunteers.

• You’ve just named a service owner and want to back them with a clear rhythm.

• You’re heading into planning season and need a quick reality check before you promise new pilots.

• A board paper or funder report has raised questions and you want to look at the service as a whole, not just one KPI.

Step 0: Set the Scene (5 minutes)

Goal: Make it clear what this hour is and isn’t.

• Name the service you’re focusing on.

• Recap its purpose in one or two sentences: who it’s for, what it’s there to do.

• If you have a service owner profile, share it on one page so everyone can see who holds end-to-end responsibility.

You might say:

Then move quickly into the four stages of service lifecycle.

Step 1 – Discover & Define: what’s changed in the world? (15 minutes)

This stage is about need and context, not solutions.

Questions to ask:

• What do people who use this service – and volunteers – say they need and value right now?

• How has demand changed in the last 6–12 months? Who’s showing up more, less or not at all?

• What’s shifted around us – cost-of-living pressures, policy changes, new local partners or gaps?

• If we had to write a one-sentence problem statement today, would it be the same as last year?

Outputs (on a sticky note or shared doc):

• 1–2 bullet points on “what’s changed”

• 1 short problem statement you broadly agree on.

This gives you a grounded starting point for the rest of the hour.

Step 2 – Design & Test: what are we actually trying or changing? (15 minutes)

Here you look at how you’re adapting the service, not just delivering it.

Questions to ask:

• What tweaks or pilots have we tried in the last year? What did we learn?

• Where are staff or volunteers quietly running workarounds that might be better as formal tests?

• If we had capacity for one small experiment in the next 60–90 days, what would we choose?

• What would success look like – and how would we know?

Outputs:

• A shortlist of 1–2 small experiments to explore further

• A rough sense of how you’ll judge if they’re worth scaling or stopping.

Step 3 – Deliver & Improve: how is it working day to day? (20 minutes)

This is the core of the check-in. You move from ideas to the real lived experience of staff, volunteers and people using the service.

Questions to ask:

• Where does the service wobble in real life – long waits, confusing hand-offs, repeated complaints?

• What does our data say? Look at a simple mix: reach, equity, outcomes, complaints themes, key risks.

• Where are we relying on heroic effort – last-minute fixes, overtime, invisible emotional labour?

• What feels fragile – “this only works because X is hanging on for dear life”?

• What are staff and volunteers telling us that we haven’t yet acted on?

Output: A short “improvement backlog” for this service – 3–5 issues or ideas, ranked by impact and risk.

Step 4 – Retire & Renew: is this still the best use of energy? (10 minutes)

The last stage asks the hard but necessary question: should this service stay as it is, change, or make space for something better?

Questions to ask:

• Given everything we’ve just surfaced, is this service:

  • Grow – doing well, worth investing more in?

  • Steady – mostly working, needs targeted fixes?

  • Pivot – still needed, but needs a shift in focus or model?

  • Retire / merge – no longer the best way to meet this need?

• If we decided to end or merge it in 12–18 months, what would we have to plan now to do that safely and fairly?

• What do we need – evidence, conversations, board time – to make a clear decision?

This isn’t about forcing closure. It’s about normalising Retire & Renew as part of good governance, not a quiet last resort.

Outputs:

• A simple “tilt” decision: Grow, Steady, Pivot or Retire/Merge

• One action that moves you towards that, even if it’s just “book a portfolio conversation with the exec sponsor and service owner.”

Bringing it together: your 60-minute agenda

Here’s how it looks as a one-hour plan:

1) Set the frame – 5 mins

Name the service, purpose and owner.

2) Discover & Define – 15 mins

What’s changed in need and context?

3) Design & Test – 15 mins

What are we trying, or what should we test next?

4) Deliver & Improve – 20 mins

Where does it wobble day to day? What’s in the improvement backlog?

5) Retire & Renew – 10 mins

Grow, steady, pivot or retire? What’s the one next step?

During your service lifecycle check-in you can capture the notes on a single page and bring them back to your next service owner review, board sub-committee or planning round.

What next?

If this resonated and a particular service is already flashing in your mind:

• Start with one service and one hour – don’t try to fix the whole portfolio.

• If you want a template for a 60-minute service lifecycle check-in for charities, download our one-page service owner profile.

• Pair this mini-guide with the full Service lifecycle management for charities article for deeper examples and prompts.

Change doesn’t start with a workshop; it starts with one honest conversation – and this hour might be a good place to begin.

Note: Examples are for illustrative purposes only; no official affiliation with the organisations or tools mentioned is claimed. AI systems can be unpredictable, so always keep personal or sensitive data out of third-party tools and ensure your implementation follows your own organisation’s data protection policies.