Case Study
Creating & Scaling a Product UX Function
I joined ZS to build the User Experience team in the Software Development group. At the outset, there were 3 designers supporting 44 products.
Products were “rocket science for rocket scientists,” and we needed to make them usable for non-experts.
Company & Position
ZS Associates, Associate Principal / Partner (2011-2017)
Details
As a centralized team, designers were split across many products, and they were not well integrated into the teams they were supporting. Furthermore, the team was staffed on a mix of client-facing and employee-enabling solutions. Clients were unhappy that releases were not shipping on time.
Actions
- Eliminated pre-sales / demo activities, while tracking unfulfilled requests; this later led to the User Experience for Consulting business case.
- Reviewed target audience and license revenue by product. Assigned designers to products in use by clients and paused work on all internal / employee-facing solutions.
- Embedded designers into product teams to deepen their expertise, ensure they became knowledgeable in their respective areas, and established a consistent way for tracking UX improvements and UI bugs in Jira.
Outcome & Impact
- Grew the Product User Experience team from 3 to 75 based on client demand, positive impact, and industry best practices.
- UX was included in product team stand-up meetings, QBR / program reviews, and roadmap planning. They were eventually able to anticipate and prepare features at least one Sprint ahead of engineering.
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