Introduction

For the first month as product design lead on the American Society of Clinical Oncologists account, I defined a roadmap based on the team's overall needs in combination to my general approach leading a design team. I took a critical mindset as I evaluated some of the processes. This was to shape the team into a high performing design team. My outline and my roadmap for the first 6 months was as follows:

1. Assess the current design processes and identify areas for improvement.

2. Understanding the design system, how it is being used, and identifying areas for improvement.

3. Review any ongoing design projects and prioritize them based on their potential impact.

4. Develop a strong working relationship with cross-functional team members, especially with the business, product, and engineering team leads.

5. Schedule regular design reviews and critiques to ensure the design quality is up to par.

6. Identify any immediate design needs or issues that require attention and address them quickly.

Getting in Sync

In the beginning, after talking to the other leads on the team, it became clear the product delivery team at large had no visibility into the work that the design team was doing. The design team had created and was working on a kanban board outside of the team’s JIRA board. This is great for the design team to organize themselves but not great to sync up design with delivery. Additionally, the design team didn’t know what designs were for what sprints, how the work was prioritized, or what to work on next. In general, there was no clarity to where design was in the process and it didn’t sync with the delivery nature of the JIRA board. 

The first thing I did was to add design to the team JIRA board. I also trained the designers to work in a backlog, in order to know what is now, next and further ahead adding more visibility and traceability. Additionally, designers had their own daily standup which seemed like meeting overhead. I removed the extra design stand-up and joined the designers to the team stand-up.

Design Strategy

As a new person to the world of the client, it was unclear how one large product was distilled into unique experiences and be able to find the current work being delivered. There was a lack of high level flows and an unclear visual design system. It was a jumbled mess of files to say the least. Additionally, there was nothing stating what designer was accountable for what design tasks, where the final designs were, what was dev ready, or what was approved. There were links to files both in Invision and Figma, doubling the upkeep.

I quickly moved all design files to Figma only, initiated mobile first responsive web approach, and created high level flows of expected experiences based on an analysis of the product overall. I made Figma project files for each experience area (bookmarks, search, profile and so forth), introduced this process to the team and encouraged adoption. I created a project file template that could be used to structure the work of specific features calling out design ideation, feedback and dev ready screens. This helped the devs go straight to the right part of the design. The file structure would also be clear to the product owner for the inevitable hand-off of all design work.

Part of this process was to also declare the Design System as a product in its own right. The Design System is the heart of the visual language for ASCO. It is the source of truth for interactions and components across all experiences. It is the only file that is used as a library and shared across feature files. Previously, it was conflated with the other feature work and could not be pushed out as a library. I created a dedicated file for the Design System as a source file, using atomic design as an organizing principle. I use a federated approach to the continuous development of the system including regular alignment across design feature teams through a bi-weekly conversation that reviewed a design system decision log. The teams' needs for improvements to the design system were driven by their own product needs independently and they worked autonomously. We needed a space to surface and discuss new components or ask questions about existing components from both a design and development point of view. This got ahead of misalignments and built a shared ownership for both design and development that was collaborative and not antagonistic.

Ceremonies

The design team had weekly recurring ceremonies including a weekly review with their main stakeholder to review upcoming designs, a design only huddle and a design wrap-up. Additionally, the design team has a bi-weekly check-in with the other team as a cross-team huddle. These ceremonies are at minimum in place for a highly functioning team. Eventually, we were able to add in lunch and learns to the mix. These are all ways to keep the design team and practice visible and valuable to the rest of the team and to the business. 

General Management

When it came to general management of the team and company best practices I realized that the design team lacked an overall understanding of agile practices on a cross-functional team, has low level of maturity with consulting practices, and has some performance issues. I provided agile coaching for designers, set clear expectations, encouraged cross-functional collaboration, and provided feedback every other week in 1:1s. In the 1:1s I provided professional development opportunities, reviewed any issues the person may be having and supported the work they were doing. I also did the hard work of removing team members who show early signs of being a risk whether it was having an ego-centric mindset, poor work ethic or lack of passion or motivation. 

Reflection

The first part of my experience on this team was not easy, but I feel like I had the right attitude and confidence in my own competencies to help build a high-performing design team. I would say though that I couldn’t have done it without the support of my product partner and my many other teammates and technical partners.