Managing Mixed Role Teams and Delivering an Awesome Product

Managing Mixed Role Teams and Delivering an Awesome ProductBy Alex Berman User Experience Team Lead, Rubenstein Technology Group

Start

Finish

Setting the Scene

Our client, a world class design firm, wanted a new website and CMS to match their new company direction

Client/Designer are the same agency

Setting Expectations

●Complicated Design = Lots of Development Time

●Simple Designs Can Mean Lots of Development Time

●Most things CAN be done - if the team is able to invest the time. Hence balance is key.

●An Awesome Product/Project May not be Perfect

Old Stuff

●Regular Collaborators

●High Expectations Based off Regular Collaboration

New Stuff

●CMS

●Site Copy

●Images

●Breakpoints

●File Types

●Team

The Team

1.2 PMs

2.4 Designers

3.3 Developers

4.1 QA Tester

5.5 Partners

Step 1: ToolsGoogle Sheets Smartsheet/Harvest

Google Chrome/Mozilla/IE 9+ 2 iPads (Air 2 +iPad 3)

3 iPhones (iPhone 5, 6, 6+) Wiki

Google Analytics/Tag Manager Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Acrobat

Step 2: Schedule

1.Smartsheet

2.Google Calendar

3.Email

4.Weekly In-Person Reviews and Feedback

5.Agreed Upon Delivery Date

Step 3: Vocabulary

1.Review Designs

2.Review Terminology

3.Agree on a set of descriptive terms for site components

Step 4: Assets1.~ 30 PSDs

2.5 InVision Files

3.3 PDFs

4.HTML/CSS

5.Javascript

6.Node.JS

7.Perl

Education

●CMS Tutorials

●Integration Tutorials

Challenges

●Vocabulary

●Process

●Timelines

●Requirements

●Saying “No” vs. “Yes”

What Worked●Excellent inter-team communication

●Clear chain of command

●Mutual respect

●Common goal

●Intense Collaboration

●Training + Training Videos

What Didn’t Work

●Timelines

●Feedback Loop + Feedback Timing

●Feedback Expectations

Takeaways

●Collaborate

●Communicate

●Educate

●Set Clear Expectations

●Say “No”

●Say “Yes”

Final Grade: A-Pro:

●Delivered Beautiful FE Website + BE

●Happy Client === Happy Life

●Continued Working Relationship w/ Client

Con:

●Unspoken expectations complicated final part of project

Contact Info

Alex Berman - Linkedin

Email: [email protected]