PSU Web 2015: How To Take The Crazy Out Of Your Company's Process Flows #psuweb
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
1 like•1,198 views
Labels, labels everywhere: product managers, product owners, squads, designers, developers, architects, agile, lean, waterfall, roles, methodologies - the list goes on and on. How do you pick an internal process flow that will work for your company? What do you do when only part of a process flow fits? What do you do when an entire process you've invested time and money in is a total flop? This talk will cover how our company created a positive, interdepartmentally collaborative, innovation friendly, process flow from the top down. I'll cover some trial and error stories, some tools that rescued our sanity, and the workflow we uncovered that fits our organization like a glove.
Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (20)
Similar to PSU Web 2015: How To Take The Crazy Out Of Your Company's Process Flows #psuweb
Similar to PSU Web 2015: How To Take The Crazy Out Of Your Company's Process Flows #psuweb (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
PSU Web 2015: How To Take The Crazy Out Of Your Company's Process Flows #psuweb
- 2. In the beginning, there were 5. Image Credit: http://www.takemyway.com/guardians-of-the-galaxy-movie-release-dates-in-u-s-u-k-india-story-star-cast-wiki-and-hd- wallpapers/
- 3. Work in a tiny incubator. Discuss what you want to do next out loud since everyone is sharing hand me down banged up desks in a tiny room. Make the things you discussed exist. Process Flow #1
- 4. We grew.
- 5. Process Flow #2 Photo Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/71217725@N00/182609361
- 6. We grew… a lot.
- 7. Process Flow #3: SalesForce Data Assistance
- 8. All hell broke loose.
- 9. Process Flow #4: Grab A Feature… Repeat.
- 10. VP Design UX UX Designers Graphic Designer UX Editors Architects Dev Engineers Hosting Break it up!
- 11. Process Flow #5: SCRUM!
- 12. Target Process At a glance see who is doing what and when. Track burn down & project progress and make sure you’re on target for your deadlines as a team. www.targetprocess.com Wait… Who is doing what?!
- 14. Sad Scrum.
- 15. Spotify… you changed our lives. Spotify Engineering Culture (Part 1) https://vimeo.com/85490944
- 16. PM CMS Scrum PM Mobile Squads Process Flow #6: Scrum/Squad Hybrid
- 17. Trello Freaking awesome for managing high level process flows. At a quick glance everyone can see what’s going on. http://www.trello.com Holy Projects, Batman!
- 18. PM Backlog Design Dev Released Trello Boards
- 19. Next Up: The Magical Process Flow to End All Process Flows
- 20. 1. Product Management Identifies The Problem
- 21. 2. Design Researches Possible Solutions & Tech
- 22. Balsamiq Fabulous rapid wireframing tool. Lets you crank out designs quickly, and cleanly. Web or desktop based. Collaborative commenting and editing options. http://balsamiq.com 3. Design Wireframes It Up
- 23. InVision App Killer tool for creating prototypes out of high res images. There’s a free version to get you started, then you can upgrade to a paid account if you love it. (Spoiler Alert: You’ll love it.) Prototype all the things: Desktop, mobile, tablet, even smart watch apps! www.invisionapp.com 4. Graphic Designer Creates a Prototype
- 24. SolidifyApp: Remote Testing www.SolidifyApp.com Silverback App: Moderated Testing www.SilverbackApp.com Survey Monkey: Remote User Research Surveys www.SurveyMonkey.com MailChimp – Manage remote testing campaigns www.mailchimp.com 5. User Research & Usability Testing Are Conducted
- 25. 6. Engineers Develop All Of The Things
- 26. 7. Designers Conduct a UX Review
- 27. Slack Amazing tool for team communication. It totally changed our team dynamic in a positive way. There is a free version Warning: Addictive Tech! www.slack.com 8. Product Owners: Monitor Progress, Communicate, Set Expectations
- 28. PO: Communicate & Monitor PM: ID Problem Design: Research Solutions Design: Wireframes, Prototypes, Testing Engineering: Develop Design: Conduct UX Review Process Flow: Lucky #7
Editor's Notes
- How to take the crazy out of your company’s process flows, by Jennifer Aldrich Image: Screaming baby
- A few friends put together a business plan, proposed it to their employer who rejected it, and then began the great adventure of creating a startup in a little small business incubator. They created a CMS for schools to build websites and teacher sections way back in 2000, before CMS’s got big. They were brilliant. Image: Guardians of the Galaxy I jumped out of a corporate monster (Verizon Wireless) and dove head first into this startup in 2007. I’m one of the 17 people who were part of the Schoolwires team straight through from 2007 until our acquisition in March 2015.
- Work in a tiny incubator. Process = Discuss what you want to do next out loud since everyone is sharing hand me down banged up desks in a tiny room, then make the things you discuss exist.
- Image: A tiny plant, medium sized plant then a large plant.
- Process Flow 2: Started using CRM. The sales and client services reps kept an ear to the ground letting the devs know what was broken so they could fix it, and what the clients really wanted (market gaps), so they could build it. Image: A bear laying on its side with its ear to the ground.
- Our company expanded like crazy, very rapidly. As the staff grew. We split in to departments. The department I eventually became part of started out as the Development & Hosting Team. Image: A huge gathering of people dressed like pirates.
- At this point our client base had grown significantly. We switched to Salesforce, and started using the data to drive business decisions and assist with interdepartmental communication. We tracked everything, pulled reports, and used the data collected to prioritize defects & feature requests.
- Our VP of Development made the decision to overhaul and rebuild the entire CMS from scratch on a .net framework to future proof the product, make it scalable, and allow us to build on it as a platform with integration capability going forward. His foresight made our company successful long term. We would have faded out of business if he hadn’t done this.
- We hired an army of devs to work on the rebuild. They pulled it off and developed a killer new system. The VP was a design phenom, so not only did they get it done, it was way ahead of the game in terms of UX. Then we had to migrate all of our client base to the new system. In the beginning it was a little buggy, but eventually they got the bugs smoothed out and migrated every one of our clients to the new system. Even though this was an insane process, we STILL maintained our 95% retention rate. Image Text: Just Git R Done!
- After the successful migration, the company started an innitiative to develop new features on our new platform. To make this happen the dev team was split in to 2 groups: Design (UX & Architecture) and Development (Engineering and Hosting). We had a UX team before UX teams became cool. ;) Image: Flow chart that shows the team breakdown.
- At this point we launched in to the wonderful world of SCRUM. We went in full force. We had a certified scrum master, a scrum ball, stand ups, epics, user stories, tasks, burn down, post its everywhere, you name it. Image: Stick figure cartoon of the curly haired guy from Ghostbusters saying, “Are you he gatekeeper? And another stick figure answering, “Um… No. I’m the scrum master.
- Scrum worked very well for the first year or two. We used Target Process to manage our SCRUM work flows.
- Then things started getting a little crazy again. Steve Jobs kept kicking out iphones, then Androids hit the ground running and Windows phones suck in as well. A major client of ours decided that they really wanted a mobile app, and they wanted us to make it for them. A tiger team of brilliant designers and developers made that app happen in a matter of weeks. And this was back in the early days of mobile apps Image: Steve Jobs holding an iPhone.
- We realized pretty quickly that scrum methods weren’t going to work for the mobile team. Image: A baby making a pitifully sad face.
- Then our VP found this amazing video about the Spotify Engineering Culture, and it completely changed our lives. The process flow they described in the first 3 minutes are so, was exactly what we needed for our mobile team to be successful and Agile.
- Mobile ditched scrum and went straight up Squads. The CMS squad continued on with the Scrum/Squad Hybrid approach, because it was working for them. Image: Diagram of this process flow.
- We had so many concurrent projects going on that we needed a high level tool to manage them all. We picked Trello.
- We broke the trello boards down so that the card columns had the following headers: Product Management Backlog, Design, Dev and Released. The product managers put the cards under each column in order of importance. When a designer was ready for a new design project, he or she would grab the top one and get to work. When the design process was done, the card would be dragged in to dev, when they were done it was dragged in to released. Image: Diagram depicting this process flow.
- Next Up: The Magical Process Flow to End All Process Flows This process flow was absolutely fantastic for our team. We had clear lines of communication, very little confusion, people were all on the same page, it was amazing. It carried us through all the way up to the point that we were acquired. Image: A picture of a unicorn dancing with a rainbow behind it.
- Image: 1 stick figures saying, “What’s your problem?” Another stick figure answering, “Excuse me??” The two stick figures replaying, “Oh, we mean what problem can we help you solve?” The other stick figure replaying, “Oh! Let me explain!”
- Image: a team of execs in suits gatahered around a macbook pro.
- Image: The Matrix movie green code raining down.
- Image: A stick figure with the label “User”, then a badly drawn bicycle with the label “Product” and a label UI with errors pointing to the steering wheel, seat and pedals. Finally, the stick figure riding the bicycle surrounded by hearts with the label, “UX.”
- A flow chart depicting the process that was just described.
- Image: A photo of Jennifer Aldrich
- Image: A photo of Jennifer Aldrich