<span data-metadata=""><span data-buffer="">between designers & our partners
<span data-metadata=""><span data-buffer="">Refining our way of working
A common problem across a number of design teams is finding ways to promote a consistent process.
This can be difficult when a team has a wide range of experience and knowledge from both the design and stakeholder sides. More senior designers tend to have a process that works for them and they can be resistant to change it. Newer designers typically don’t have a process and either adopt one based on the project at hand or adapt to the more experienced designer’s process which may not work across the team. The problem with this approach is two fold; the inconsistency that stakeholders working with the design team experience and the lack of having enough consistency to track progress and manage workloads. Due to the array of stages different project will go through, for a stakeholder it is very difficult and confusing to know what needs to be done and when they can expect delivery. From the design side, treating each project differently makes planning and roadmapping extremely unpredictable.
While solutions to this problem will be dependent upon the space you work in, there will be common elements. Below is how we as a design team tackled this challenge at Rocket. As we broke down the way we were operating as a team, we realized we needed more structure. This would help us operate more consistently and help us be more inclusive in our work. The team decided to break this down into two steps:
01
PART 1
Work with our partners to develop a review process that we could socialize and and develop with our stakeholders so that they would feel included in the process. We held working sessions with individual groups as well as larger cross functional ones to hone in on when each team’s input was needed. In working with partners across the space, we could determine when and where to include each type of stakeholder. We openly discussed how to include partners wither through working sessions with key stakeholders, reviews for those impacted by the work, or readouts for awareness to the larger group. This dialog helped everyone working with design feel heard and understand when and where their input was valued. Below is a process diagram that was the output of those sessions.
02
PART 2
Within the design team, we worked together to built a design process that all could follow. Using tools like Jira, we were able to lift a detailed task management template that allowed the flexibility for senior designers to move quickly yet provided guidance to the less experienced ones to follow. In addition, by breaking down our tickets this way, partners such as our product and tech teams were able to dive into any ticket at any time to see, in more detail, the progress made. This transparency lead to more constructive conversations and building of trust among the groups.
– Larger tasks were required to follow, yet check lists with subtasks were ment for thos that needed extra direction to stay on track and understand what was needed to complete one task and move to the next.
– One key task, the “wrap up” is often missed as teams tend to hand off a project and immediately move onto the next. We found as a team we needed this task to help us slow down, protect our time and properly close out our work before we moved on.
As tickets were honed in our backlog and grooming process, ticket tasks could be expanded or condensed based on a per project basis allowing for alignment on sizing, expectation setting with time and better information to manage our workloads and roadmapping tools.
03
BRINGING THE PARTS TOGETHER
The last piece was to align the two parts together. The end result was a more efficient and aligned process across the product space. Each design stage aligned with a stakeholder meeting were requirements/decisions were either made and a project moved forward or action items were identified to get a project to the next phase.
– Each task has a review mtg that aligns back to the stakeholder review process refined in step 1
– In addition Design implemented a defined set of requirements that must be met in order for the task to be completed and advanced to the next stage.
Since launching these tools, the design team and it’s partners have built stronger relationships and ceremonies of refinement, planning, and delivery. We are much more in sync across the organization and have been able to lift additional tools like the roadmapping one below that syncs design work with research’s roadmap. As we move forward we’ll further develop these tools to bring in automation that will ladder up to our quarterly and yearly OKRs.
REsults
While we continue to hone our process, we are now conducting productive roadmap meetings…