tales from a balanced team
TRANSCRIPT
SpringOne 08.02.16
With Alex, Jim, and Josh
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
Tales from a Balanced Team
Balanced Team Values
Create Trust Share Experiments Celebrate Failure Diverse Voices
About Pivotal Labs
● Small, multi-disciplinary teams (Product Manager, Engineers, Product Designer)
from Pivotal and Clients
● Projects are both execution and enablement, we teach and work fast!
● Clients work on-site with us
● Cross discipline pairing
● User centered design (user interviews, personas, experiments, synthesis)
● All these things combined make us great agile/lean teams
The ProjectSmall Token app
The Client
Give Lively - a nonprofit looking to change the way people give. This was their first product.
The Problem
As our world becomes more materialistic, how might we create a simple and instant way for givers to
express gratitude in a more meaningful way?
The Project
Give Lively and Pivotal developed an application called Small Token that makes it easy and quick to
give a donation to a nonprofit on behalf of someone you care about.
Product Manager Designer Engineers Client PM Stakeholders
The Team
1 1 4 1 2
The Timeline
Research Kickoff
Sep. 29th, 2015
Development Kickoff
Oct. 13th, 2015
MVP LaunchGiving TuesdayDec. 1st, 2015
Milestone 1Gift Customization
Dec. 16st, 2015
Milestone 2Photo Customization
Jan. 13st, 2016
DisengagementJan. 22nd, 2016
8 weeks
Balanced Tales
Collaborative Research
During our research phase, engineers, designers and PM’s participated in user interviews and synthesis sessions. This allowed us all to gain more empathy for end users and insight that helped suggest tech solutions and platforms.
The people who do the research are those that build the product.
UNBALANCED
Research may be done outside of the project, and team members may not participate
BALANCED
“Minimum Approvable Product”
David, our Client PM, had done research in the App Store guidelines, and was aware of a special rule requiring charity apps to accept payment outside of the app. But guidelines are vague.
This prompted us to create a “Minimum Approvable Product” to submit as early as possible to ensure our app would be approved.
Business and Tech Concerns are Intertwined
UNBALANCED
Tech decisions follow business decisions
BALANCED
Diversity of knowledge is shared
UNBALANCED
Knowledge is siloed
BALANCED
Sketching Studio
We did a sketching/design studio during our Discovery and Framing process after identifying key users and working through scenarios. This helped us collectively arrive at a MVP workflow for giving a gift that incorporated UI ideas from across the team.
All members of the team are given an opportunity to provide design ideas
UNBALANCED
Designers pitch mocks over the wall to implement
BALANCED
Story Time
For every project we meet as a team once a week to discuss prioritization of stories. On a few occasions, design set aside time to pair with the Pivotal PM and client PM on writing stories and fleshing out acceptance criteria.
All team members have input into how features are broken down into stories, and their priority
UNBALANCED
Business decisions drive requirements, and their priority, without regard for complexity or user value
BALANCED
Design/Dev Pair
Throughout the project there were times where it was necessary for design and engineering to pair on complex user flows.
For example, Alex approached me one afternoon about some unknown complexity with cropping photos within the app. The next afternoon we spent a few hours pairing together in xcode spiking the cropping interaction for multiple screen sizes.
Everyone has a responsibility for the success of the product, so we work together as necessary to make it happen
UNBALANCED
Roles are typically siloed, and disciplines stick to their sole responsibilities
BALANCED
Thanks!
ARCHIVE
Where to sign up?
Product and design had made a workflow decision about account registration. A developer raised an important concern about this decision’s impact on payment conversion. We immediately broke out as a team to discuss the implications of this decision on product, design and technology.
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Take-away
All team members should feel empowered to influence product, design, and development decisions.