Building the UX team that always wins - The Framework
I recently gave a talk at the Tech on Tap event arranged by Robert Half Technology and The Creative Group at Schlafly Bottleworks in Maplewood. The topic revolved around building a sustainable UX team. This post is the high level summary of that talk. I will write more detailed posts on each sections of the talk in subsequent time.
Building and thriving UX team is a complex topic. I was asked about it at least 100 times if not more, if there is any secret formula. I wondered equal times, if I could boil up all that I did in my tenure at Enterprise Holdings as I led the User Experience team there. How can I summarize things that sometimes felt like a strong gut feeling or would rather be termed unconventional from the typical management style but made total sense to me and aligned with our need/growth strategy back then. And if so, will they make any sense or be useful to anyone else.
The Creative Group reached out with a speaking opportunity and that forced me to ground myself and start putting my UX Team Building journey on paper. Thank you, The Creative Group. By the way, they are smart group of recruiters that will help you fill any of your UX, design and creative talent needs. Give them a shout, and be ready to be surprised.
To be really honest, I struggled with where to start and how to convey my lessons learned over years to a wide variety of audience in a clear and succinct manner. I needed a model. I needed a framework, which essentially could culminate all those gut feelings, management styles/practices, successes and failures into a practice handbook that someone new to UX management could pick up and start gaining insights right away. Also, I needed to channel my thoughts and learnings so that I can build upon it myself as I look back and reflect.
Over one weekend, I got victorious. I created The Best Practice Pillars.
The cyclical process made sense to me. It also followed the design thinking methodology of Assess (empathize), Ideate & build, and then Test & Repeat cycles at some level. But most importantly, it gave me structure to all those best practices I was thinking in terms of building and growing a successful UX team.
Its all about 4 quadrants and repeating best practices within them over a period of time. Here is the basic overview of each.
1. It is very important to assess your own organization (and current team structure, if you have one) before you start making any changes. It's also important that you come to this phase every now and then especially after significant change in terms of team size or talent pool.
2. Once you know your situation, you need to build your team with some tried and true hiring best practices. But remember, its not just about hiring good people but also how you define your team structure, skills and its focus, so that you keep attracting good talent.
3. Training and retaining talent make assess and building teams sounds easy as that is the hardest part of building rock star UX teams. This is where you start with some management common sense and lot of customized approach for individual team members. Its about motivation, project work, promotions and everything that falls in-between.
And finally,
4. If you don't keep an eye on future, its impossible to grow and sustain that growth as the UX discipline changes at the lightening speed.
Change or be changed is the mantra.
The four quadrants are equally important. They build upon each other. Depending on what you do in a prior quadrant helps you shape up your activities in the next one. Also, it's cyclical for a reason. As you finish one cycle, you ladder-up the UX maturity of your organization and your own team.
I will go into each phase in details in upcoming posts.
Author Bio: My name is Mandar Pathak and I run the website www.optimizeprodux.com and its associated blog. Optimize-ProdUX is my consulting adventure advising clients about better User Experience (UX) and Digital Strategy. The office is located in St. Louis, MO.
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