In 2019, I returned to the Partner Experience space as Senior Design Manager. Unfortunately, there was no team in place to manage. This was both an opportunity and a massive challenge. I was able to hire a great team from scratch, but by the time they were in place there had been limited or no design coverage for almost a year. The challenge was compounded by the size of the PM/engineering organization - roughly 650 people, in dozens of feature areas.

After the team of four designers was in place, we needed a way to dig out of the accrued design debt. I introduced and refined a work tracking process with three major pillars.

1. Triage

We required our partners and stakeholders within the PM and engineering org to open deliverable requests to be triaged weekly. While it’s difficult to accurately cost UX design projects, we took the approach of roughly T-shirt sizing each request that came in. While the product team’s input on priority was helpful, that had to also be weighed with relative impact the design team could have in the space in order to assess design priority. Weighing cost and priority allowed us to have deeper design engagements on the most important areas and consult on smaller or potentially less impactful work. We could use this time to give the right project to the right resource, while I helped them build subject matter expertise without being overwhelmed.

2. Tracking

Because of the relative lack of overlap between the different feature teams, it didn’t necessarily make sense to host daily scrums. Instead, we triaged on Monday, and I held feedback focused 1:1s midweek. The tracking process ensured I could quickly understand and communicate project status, team capacity, and scope creep (more on that later) with minimal interruption for the designers.

3. Mitigate Scope Creep

By holding ourselves accountable to the original costing we were able to do a decent job of mitigating scope creep. For example, seeing extra hours being spent on a project costed as “Large” was a good indicator that we needed to work with stakeholders to reassess scope. If the definition of “done” feels like a moving target, it was time to re-triage the project, potentially splitting it into smaller pieces, or put it in the backlog til the scope could meet the definition of “ready.”

Transitioning Our Operating Model

By utilizing this process, we were able to effectively chip away at the backlog without overwhelming the team. My goal was to shift our operating model to be a more even split between feature work and foundational strategic initiatives. We were successful, as after several months I could refocus the team on big ticket items like accessibility standards, design language evolution, UX bug tracking and certification, and navigation refinement while meeting the need for iteration on important feature work.

Here’s a brief deck breaking down some of the specifics of the process.