How I aligned 7 teams to deliver an improved end-to-end solution for customers.
💼 Role: Founding Principal UX Designer
🗓️ Dates: Jan 2019 – Oct 2020
👥 Team: Sr. Product Manager, Sr. UX Researcher, Lead Engineer (starting Aug 2019)
🚀 Stage: Discovery to Launch
🔏 Note: This project was conducted under an NDA. Most of the visual artifacts from this project are not allowed to be shown. The selected images shown here were approved by Workiva’s Legal Team.
Challenge:
Differentiated Capabilities with No Dedicated Engineering Team
Global Statutory Reporting was an attractive market because the process and needs aligned so closely with the existing product offerings. However, there were numerous adjustments that needed to be made to tailor to the needs of this type of reporting. These spread into about 7 different existing team’s product areas. And all of them had time sensitive priorities with a re-factor to move the application off of Flash.
There were also (initially) no engineers dedicated to this new area since it felt like most of the asks being made were small features in other team’s areas. Management didn’t understand what technical surface a new team would own.
How We Faced It
Broke down the current solution (on the old platform) and organized it in a story map alongside user goals. This was done on a wall in the walkway of many contributing teams, elevating shared understanding and visibility. (see picture above) (Collaboration between Product Manager & me.)
Set an aggressive goal to ensure all new GSR customers would be set up on the new platform and worked with contributing teams to align roadmaps.
Identified highest pains and got leadership buy-in to prioritize new features on new platform instead over re-platforming work.
Kept a consistently updated research repository wiki with every call, notes, and takeaways for any other team to utilize. (Collab between UX Researcher & me.)
Built out a set of research informed personas, organas and illustrated stories to build empathy and shared knowledge of the solution. (See next slides.) (Lead by me in collab with UX Researcher.)
Discovered opportunity to build a team that would focus on accelerating globalization & localization features. Presented analysis and proposal to CTO & Head of Product for head count. (Analysis and proposal done by me.)
Vision Stories
During this project, I witnessed the influential power of sharing engaging stories over data or bullets of insights. I’ve given multiple talks internally around storytelling, storyboarding, and illustration/comic techniques for designers, and shared in a public recorded workshop for the Denver UX Meetup. (Watch on Youtube)
These are selected slides I created summarizing work from the kickoff workshop intended to build empathy and show a potential solution direction. Not shown are visual breakdowns of the current processes, roles, reports, and competitors. This stand-alone deck was easy to share around and became a go-to resource as we brought more and more people into the process.
Sharing Research with Collaborators
Kept a consistently updated research repository wiki with every call, notes, and takeaways for any other team to utilize. (above)
Built out a set of research informed personas, organas (a term we invented for different types of organizations) and illustrated stories to build empathy and shared knowledge of the solution.
Shared story summaries and sketch notes with cross-departmental team and collaborating product teams. Stories and illustrations were very effective to increase engagement and build empathy. (above)
Created Journey & Story Map artifacts that helped teams see how their small piece fit in the broader story.
Impact of This Work
We were able to meet our ambitious deadline for getting new customers onto the new platform. More than 7 different product teams’ contributed features into the end-to-end solution with an additional key differentiation from the old platform. This one new add saved Services over 1,000 hours in the first month on new document setups and gave them confidence to put some new document setups directly into customer’s hands for the first time.
Persuaded R&D leadership to create a brand new team with dedicated headcount to accelerate progress. Started with Engineering Lead August 2020. In 2022, that team grew to 4 engineers, 1 PM, and 1 designer.
Anecdotally, I was humbled to see the viral power of the stories we shared. Even into 2022, I was hearing others share those stories and even some direct phrases we used around new opportunities.
