Lean-Agile Digital Services has provided product management leadership for the Manage your UK ETS reporting service for Installations and Aviation, a GOV.UK service run by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ). The service underpins the UK Emissions Trading Scheme, one of the government’s flagship decarbonisation instruments.

Working as part of the multidisciplinary delivery team, alongside civil servants, regulators and supplier teams, Lean-Agile helped shift the service from a traditional, requirements driven model towards a product led operating model, embedding iterative delivery, stakeholder collaboration, and user centred design at its core.

Over this period, the service evolved from stage gated releases to a continuous, iterative delivery model, with regulators, operators and verifiers actively shaping its direction.

Why this service matters

The UK ETS is critical to the UK’s net zero commitments, and its reporting service is where policy becomes practice. It carries the verified emissions reports that drive the scheme’s compliance cycle, alongside an auction revenue stream the Office for Budget Responsibility estimated at £2.6 billion in 2024-25. Deadlines are statutory, and every change must work for operators across energy intensive industries and aviation, independent verifiers and five regulator organisations.

The starting point

The service was established and worked, and its delivery model reflected the stable, regulated environment it was built for. Sustained policy change meant it now needed to adapt continuously as well. Lean-Agile joined in May 2024 to help the service make that shift, through a product management role covering prioritisation, roadmap planning, stakeholder communication and delivery.

What Lean-Agile contributed

• Product led operating model: Lean-Agile replaced requirements management with a product management discipline, introducing capability decomposition and Product Improvement Items, so every request became an opportunity to improve the service rather than a deviation from a plan.
• Outcome based roadmap: Lean-Agile created the Solution Roadmap, giving short term certainty, long term direction and one view of priorities and dependencies across regulators, policy teams and suppliers.
• User centred design and discovery: user research became an organic part of development, with GDS-aligned discovery, user surveys and iterative feedback as standard practice.
• Regulators in governance: a formal engagement model gave all five regulator organisations a structured voice in prioritisation, including through quarterly planning.
• One Team and delivery discipline: a single product team with one Scrum board on Jira, user story standards and Scrum ceremonies, and iterative analysis alongside development so large initiatives reached users in smaller pieces.
• Less waste, lower cost: a reusable approach to workflows (for example the Golden Workflow), a move, improve, merge or retire decision for every migrated report, and lightweight documentation.

Lessons from this work

• Product management, not requirements management: the words a team uses shape its behaviour. Moving from a “Change Request Register” to “Product Improvement Items” marked a cultural shift from gatekeeping to continuous improvement.
• Regulated services need shorter cycles, not more governance: statutory deadlines are an argument for clear priorities and fast feedback, not extra approval layers.
• Embedded leadership works when ownership is explicit: the product lead structures the choices, the evidence and the follow through. The outcomes belong to the service, the department and the users.

This experience shaped how Lean-Agile connects strategy, user needs and daily delivery, and inspired the Lean-Agile Service Assessment, a model for evaluating and improving delivery health in complex, regulated environments.