Collaboration

Task:
How might we improve collaboration between product, design and engineering?

Problem:
Developers raised concerns that they were only doing what they were told by designers. They wanted to be more involved in the end to end journey and input in to discovery. It felt as though everyone was on a production line, and was very much a waterfall approach to product.

Solution:
I created a 3 amigos sessions with representatives from product, engineering and design. Resulting in better collaboration and better well rounded solutions.

Meetings

Task:
How might we improve attendance and sharing of work at our weekly show and tell meeting

Problem:
With the design team being split in to either UX, UI or app designers the team was rather large in size, designers lacked psychological safety to share their work.

Solution:
I created an agenda shared via a slack reminder each week, where designers would take it in turns to present their work, I also created smaller feedback groups rather than 1 large group ensuring designers felt comfortable in sharing work.

Task:
How might we improve sprint review efficiency?

Problem:
Prior to me joining the app team, all 6 app designers would prepare what they had worked on in a 2 week sprint with 1 nominated designer presenting the work. This was hugely time consuming and the designer presenting struggled to provide the right context on each piece of work.

Solution:
I implemented a new structure to sprint reviews, encouraging the designer who had done the work to present it them self. Before the design team presented, I introduced the design sprint goal to provide context.

Prioritisation

Task:
How might we improve design prioritisation?

Problem:
The app design team had their own design backlog separate to the product team, this often left stakeholders confused and unsure as to what the design team would be working on next.

Solution:
I reviewed all the design Jira boards and restructured them in a way that was easy to understand for all stakeholders.