Portfolio Vision
The Problem
I was overseeing a portfolio consisting of 3 squads. Teams A and B were high functioning while Team C was somewhat dysfunctional. Team C also had a reputation of taking a long time to ship projects that failed to meet user needs.
Symptoms of these pains
Low adoption on Team C releases.
Team C was was often slowed down reacting to last min fires due to lack of upfront planning.
The team struggled to break down ideas into bite sized pieces.
The Solution
I partnered with the GPM to facilitate a visioning and process sprint with the goal of creating a vision for the squad to work through and identify ways to improve process and create structured space for knowledge sharing & re-evaluate research practices. All teams participated in various activities to align on expectations, mapped out and optimized processes and developed a north star vision.
Impact
Clarity around target user groups and research methodologies to ensure a more focused research insights.
Reduced meetings due to decision-making frameworks and templates freed up a cumulative 600 hours/quarter.
The teams shipping cycle or time to market dropped decreased by 30%.
Information sharing among the teams led to a drastic and rapid up-leveling of all teams, but especially Team C.
Key Learnings
Bad research can be worse than no research.
Though initially reluctant the team was relieved to have a framework for shipping smaller projects and forecasting to get ahead of work.
Facilitating knowledge sharing between the two teams was not only more effective in up-leveling processes, but respective team members also saw rapid growth. They felt more comfortable reaching out to peers for help and the peers relished in mentorship opportunities.
Below are snapshots from some of the sprint activities and outputs.
Sprints take time from everyone and are expensive, so it’s important the leadership team defined clear outcomes and was diligent and intentional with planning.
Process Mapping
We mapped out the “happy path” process to identify milestones and align on expectations. Each project has different needs and strict cookie-cutter processes inevitably slow progress. But this activity created space for the high performing teams to share process with others and facilitated conversation across all squads. All attendees shared powerful feedback about this activity.
User Feedback Loop
Rapid Research! A four day power research leg was part of this sprint. The designers drove this and shared insights with the team daily. This helped us better understand our users, core needs and where we were failing them.
Insights Gathering Snapshot from the scenario mapping activity that included squad leads and customer support to centralize and share siloed research efforts and gain a holistic understanding of key user jobs and pain points. This activity helped us zero in on priorities and define future user stories and understand knowledge gaps or focus areas for further research.
Decision-making Resources and Frameworks One outcome of the mapping activity was a set of tools, resources and knowledge centralization to expedite certain tasks that didn’t need to be re-invented each time.
Also, re-evaluating the approach to user research, including methodology and participant segments. The team had been doing research, but focusing on a segment that was non-representative of our focus. Zero-ing in on in the vision, was essential in ensuring more accurate research insights.
Ecosystem Snapshots
High level vision of how feature areas of different squads play and interact with one another. This helped us define future user stories and articulate key jobs-to-be-done and a whole (the portfolio) and within the squads.
Snapshots from the final vision deck.