PORTFOLIO • Management
Design Teams Management Process
My Design Team Management Process is designed to help companies and teams become more flexible, efficient and productive. One of the most crucial aspects of this is ensuring the scalability of the design framework used.
Design Management Practice In Numbers
7
Design Teams created
and scaled for the product
and service companies
and scaled for the product
and service companies
30+
People in the Design Teams
managed simultaneously
managed simultaneously
4
Companies still work with
the Design culture built by me
the Design culture built by me
Design Team Processes are unique to every team. When developing a new Design Team Process, I apply my experience in Kanban, SAFE, Scrumban and Scrum methodologies to assess which methodologies align with company traditions and will be most effective at helping teams and companies achieve their goals.
When developing a new Design Team Process, I always ensure that I engage directly with the Design Team and a wide range of other stakeholders within a company. This allows everyone to adjust to new processes and adapt their approaches where necessary, all while ensuring that any new processes are aligned with the company's culture and values.
In the following section I set out the main principles when establishing new Design Team Processes and the approaches I have taken to effectively implement new processes while consulting and managing Design Teams.
When developing a new Design Team Process, I always ensure that I engage directly with the Design Team and a wide range of other stakeholders within a company. This allows everyone to adjust to new processes and adapt their approaches where necessary, all while ensuring that any new processes are aligned with the company's culture and values.
In the following section I set out the main principles when establishing new Design Team Processes and the approaches I have taken to effectively implement new processes while consulting and managing Design Teams.
Main principles
To measure the success of Design Team Processes, I use the following KPIs:
- Efficiency
- Scalability
- Agility
- Proactiveness
Design team mission and goals
Mission
Delight Customers and Product Owners with modern, high quality designs
Goals
Delight Customers and Product Owners with modern, high quality designs
Goals
- Faster delivery of high quality design
- Reducing the time needed to understand and iterate
- Improving interactions between Scrum Teams and Design Teams
Design Team Framework
When helping companies and teams improve their Design Team Processes, I found that it's always important to create a bespoke framework, which
clearly details all of their flows, roles and tools for typical working processes.
In practice, the most important elements of this framework are:
clearly details all of their flows, roles and tools for typical working processes.
In practice, the most important elements of this framework are:
- Meetings with scrum teams
- Designers responsibilities
- Categorization of the type of tasks that can be added to backlog
- Design sprint
- Task statuses
- Design task flow
- Design tasks creation checklist
- Backlog supervising processes
Design Request
To implement effective design processes, it's also vital that Product Owners understand how to effectively submit requests for a Designer to assist with their projects and tasks. To facilitate this I generally create a flow, based on my own expertise, which contains all typical scenarios in which a Product Owner would need to request a designer.
These include:
These include:
- A new request
- Day-to-Day Scrum team process
- Designers dedication
- Design Processes
Ideas
When establishing new Design Processes, it's vital to collect constructive feedback with ideas on what could make the design process, interactions, working processes or life in the company more enjoyable and effective. I'm a strong believer that seeking ideas from all areas of a company improves transparency, team interactions and helps engage Design Teams with overarching corporate objectives more effectively.
Design Team Management Tools
Design Team Skillset Patterns Summary
To assign tasks and projects to right skilled people and manage Design Team the best way, I created an instrument which simplifies Design Team skillset patterns analysis.
It contains all actual skills and skillset metrics for each designer in the company.
All that information summarized in the diagrams, and displays designers skill profiles & utilization percentage.
Using Skillset Patterns Summary diagram, I greatly reduced designers allocation management time.
It contains all actual skills and skillset metrics for each designer in the company.
All that information summarized in the diagrams, and displays designers skill profiles & utilization percentage.
Using Skillset Patterns Summary diagram, I greatly reduced designers allocation management time.
Designers Allocation
Having a lot of product lines and projects in the companies I had a need to have a summarized information about Design team workload and allocation. In projection to Design Team throughput and actual workload, I created and used this tool to simplify and speed up projects pipeline building and to plan designers allocation for future period.
Designers Assessment
I practice planned designers' assessments with fixed periods regarding a Company policy.
To avoid the subjective skills evaluation, I use formalized and automated competency matrix with scoring.
The scoring is flexible, and the weight of skills differs for different designers' specializations.
My own goal in the assessment stage is transparent skillset measurement and feedback, which positively influences designers'
professional growth.
To avoid the subjective skills evaluation, I use formalized and automated competency matrix with scoring.
The scoring is flexible, and the weight of skills differs for different designers' specializations.
My own goal in the assessment stage is transparent skillset measurement and feedback, which positively influences designers'
professional growth.
Designers Career Development
Together with assessments, I practice building the career development plan for the Designers in my team.
The plan covers the skillset needed in the company for the efficient achievement of business goals and staying competitive in the target market segment.
In making the Career Development Plan, I take into account the individual talents of designers and the perspective of my team's composition on the company development strategy.
The plan covers the skillset needed in the company for the efficient achievement of business goals and staying competitive in the target market segment.
In making the Career Development Plan, I take into account the individual talents of designers and the perspective of my team's composition on the company development strategy.
Do you want to know more about my experience,
or wish to discuss a UX/UI Design Management opportunity? Get in touch now. I'd be delighted to hear from you.
or wish to discuss a UX/UI Design Management opportunity? Get in touch now. I'd be delighted to hear from you.
Andrei Tarasevich
© 2022 | Andrei Tarasevich
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