Initiative: Product Development Process

ROLES

Lead Designer, Facilitator, Advocate, Dot-connector

ACTIVITIES

Mural Brainstorming, Industry Analysis, Workshop facilitation, Documentation

COLLABORATION

Designers, Design Ops, Design Leadership, Product Management, Engineering, QA, Research, Visual Design, Analytics, Data Science, Content Strategy, Program Management, Scrum Master

TIME LINE

2 months (2029) + 2 months (2023)

Situation

Two large projects missed deadlines due to under-estimation of engineering effort.

Problem Statement

How might we better estimate engineering effort and bring design into the mix earlier to help think through MVP solutions and beyond.

Task

Come up with a better way of building products that follows agile but doesn’t rush into development.

Actions

I worked with my manager and Director of Product to investigate gaps in the current process and researched methods used in the industry. I took the lead to set up feedback sessions to ensure we reviewed the proposed changes with the rest of the team and got their input.

Results

2019:

  • The new agile collaborative process stressed the importance of discovery and ideation before rushing to solution building, introduced the foundation design brainstorming step in the process, and put design at the table at every step along the way.

  • I created a visual representation of the process and a roles and responsibilities supplement.

  • Director of Product & I presented the process to other scrum teams in the organization and the artifacts were used for onboarding new team members from that point on.

  • The process was so successful that it became the backbone of how we worked for over 4 years and we won a distinction award for team collaboration for .

2023:

  • As new team functions like content strategy and data science started playing a prominent role in product development, I suggested revisiting the process documents.

  • I designed and facilitated an all-day workshop with 30+ team cross-functional team members to include new functions like content strategy and data science. I helped create a Mural board ahead of time of the various roles and responsibilities and deliverables. During the workshop I set up a forum for teams to first share their concerns within their own teams and then share with the larger group. This led to more understanding of concerns and expectations between the teams.

  • I mapped all of the feedback on Mural and clustered into themes which were discussed with leads from each function in followup sessions.

  • This ended up with a revised list of ownership and deliverables.