Jon Rumsey

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How to Align People In Your Organization For A Killer Product

About Tamara

UX Expert

Overview

Why do capable, hard working groups design terrible products, services, websites, etc?

Assumptions come into play and cause issues.

Alignment between management and engineering is not always there, even when it seems like it!

Need informed decisions from those above you, despite them not really knowing what it is exactly they want.

Notes

Look for alignment within your organization.

Are there busines goals?
Agreement on who the customers/clients are?
Wants and needs lists exist?

Questions to ask:

Are executive-level goals actually clear?
Are the communicated priorities clear?
Are resources well-allocated?
Are processes honed (for the job at hand)?
Are the teams actually aligned?

Some stakeholders won't even know what goals and objectives currently are, but might not act that way.

Executives are human:

Dealing with lots of politics.
Not always super clear on what they want (and need).

What Engineering Needs from Execs:

What is it that engineering should build?
Which users is this thing for? Who are they? What motivates them?
How's different/better?
Why customers care?
How will we know we did it right?

Talking about users, there are many of them: Admin, super-user, user, new customer, enterprise user, SMB user, etc. None of these are clear!

As the engineer, ask the question: "How will I build x for user (see list above)?" If that is hard to figure out, it means the definition is abstract/ambiguous for the project.

User Stories That Will Help:

Describe users focusing on Wants.
Describe users focusing on Needs.

It is important to pay attention to business goals!

Write users of my most important users. Make 3 of them! Doesn't matter what level of the organization hierarchy you are at.

Ask your colleagues the same question and see if they have the same answers.
Document the similarities and (many more) differences.
Are the responses described in a helpful way?
Do the responses reflect the bottom-line goals for the group/company?

Ask questions about the project and how it relates to business goals:

Success means which numbers change, and by how much? (what do I think the elements and numbers are/should be?)
Use mad-libs: Increase/Decrease "Metric" by "Amount" within "Timeframe".
Write the answers in the context of the project you are working on.
Prioritize the metrics! Then remember to recall the priorities so when something new comes along, ask "how does this change x priorities from y time ago?". This helps keep opinions out of the conversation and keeps agreements/alignment on the table for these conversations.

But business goals:

Never appropriate to ask for.
Never fully exist. We think they exist but they are not 100% aligned.
Things shift through various periods/cycles...but nobody records and communicates the shifts!
Various amounts of change will exist among the executives.
Assume immediate changes, but engineering changes (like webapp revamp/redeploy) won't change statistics for some time.

Addressing the Relevant Needs of our most important users:

Collaborative exercise is best but can be solo.
Open a spreadsheet.
User's POV statements "I want" and "I need".
Look for motivations => Why is this user showing up? What bucket of user type do they associate with? (n-seeker, career builder, etc)... i.e. categorize them. Cross-category is possible/likely.
Add names and faces to the users, based on grouped-together wants and needs.

Alignment Personas: Names and faces put on who we think are key users and what motivates them to use our app/website/service. These are hypotheses.

Ask through data collection.
Do the hypotheses match-up with existing users?
Data elements from collection now drops into buckets based on alignment personas.

Identify which users need to be make very happy in order to move the needs on the business goals.

If we don't make a and b very happy, then we won't hit our highest priority goals.
Avoids battles over who might have the better idea.

Make the plan practical:

Act as a user personal while using the product. Can you find what you are looking for?
Take experience from these trials to the design teams, along with the oranizational goals, and gaining traction on moving forward.

Key Takeaways

Do NOT embarrass your boss while trying to get details about requirements and expectations.

Help the people above you make decisions earlier in the process, to help drive business goals.

Visit Tamara's website.

Put yourself in the position of the executives, where you have to figure out the percentages and amounts by which business results are measured.

Conversations about goals and alignments might not be happening further up the chain, even though we believe they are happening. Be a part of the solution to help make these conversations happen.

Ask for course-corrections for yourself from management and executives, to spark the conversations and get hard information when possible.

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