In my previous product role, our team interviewed in a product trio and delivered using Shape Up. These Ways of Working enabled our small team to consistently over-deliver. Below are the key moments I played in our first v1 product, Automated Membership. From framing the problem, to shaping the UX, and seeing it through launch with a technical understanding, I guided the project to done.
Framing
Before I joined, the Director and Product Leader decided that my team will focus on the Employee Onboarding process for the 10K-person company. Which was convyed to me from our organization's Product Leader.
I began interviewing new-hires about their recent onboarding experience. And noticed a pattern that many of them search for and wait to be added to groups. This gives them access to tools and news. So I started interviewing the owners of these groups. Which were often People Ops, fellow subject matter experts (SME's) for onboarding. Each week they updated their lists with new hires. I looked at the logs and saw thousands of manual adds each year. After considering that my team needs to save the company time, I framed the problem.
Before I joined, the Director and Product Leader decided that my team will focus on the Employee Onboarding process for the 10K-person company. Which was convyed to me from our organization's Product Leader.
I began interviewing new-hires about their recent onboarding experience. And noticed a pattern that many of them search for and wait to be added to groups. This gives them access to tools and news. So I started interviewing the owners of these groups. Which were often People Ops, fellow subject matter experts (SME's) for onboarding. Each week they updated their lists with new hires. I looked at the logs and saw thousands of manual adds each year. After considering that my team needs to save the company time, I framed the problem.
Shaping
Many of the group owners were using basic filters, like employee title and organization, to find the right people to place in their groups. If we created automation rules based on filters they set, our product could automate this process.
I wanted to breadboard the interaction flow to configure rules, and called a working session with our lead engineer. In one meeting we worked through the feasibility of different use-cases. Some of group owners used complex filtering to find employees. And replicating this functionality could take months. To ship something in six weeks, we called this out-of-scope and focused on simpler nesting.
Afterwards I sketched the key screens of the UI and met with our Engineer and Designer. We further worked through the use-cases and hit another feasibility problem. Autofilling values for the filters could also take months of work. As a workaround I suggested that we reference a spreadsheet with the valid values. The Designer agreed that is usable enough for our first version. We had clarity to build.
Building
To initiate building, I wrote the Frame and Shape in one document, the product pitch. Then I shared it with the whole team in our kick-off meeting. The other engineers digested the document and asked clarifying questions. They understood what to build and created a plan of attack.
While the team built, I drafted the marketing content for each channel. Which included the Slack group for People Ops.
During the build, the engineers noticed useful functionality that we had not discussed. A "bulk add" feature that adds members all-at-once instead of each week. I deemed it nice-to-have and maybe a feature of v1.1.
About a week before building ended, I QA'd our product and found many issues. I called the team together for a bug bash, where we documented issues and prioritized fixes. In a retrospective we agreed that next time the engineers will QA first.
Launch & Learn
To release our product, we posted marketing across channels, monitored reactions, and I responded to inquiries. People Ops invited me to demo the product in their monthly meeting. Afterwards they asked questions, gave insights for additional features, and configured their own rules.
Our Product Leader asked me to demo the product in our company-wide conference. I also presented our Ways of Working to our 50-person organization. With support from leadership, we iterated with two more build cycles and I tracked impact. Over 100 groups were automated, saving approximately 10 minutes per each onboard.
Idea through Done
From a direction, I guided and developed an idea through launch. By collaborating with Engineering and Design in the shaping phase, we de-risked the project. The product pitch then empowered the team to build on their own. No need for daily standups or managing a backlog. Instead I used this time to create marketing and frame new problems. The process is sustainable and consistently delivers.