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Client
FordLabs

Summary
Improve the skillset resource allocation to products process.

My Role
UX Research

UX Design

Problem Statement

At FordLabs, allocating resources effectively to both incoming products and ongoing products was a challenge. The current system struggled in allocating resources to products that matched their individual goals. This resulted in dissatisfaction with resource handoff between different stages of the product. Addressing these issues with numerous experiments was crucial to smooth transitions throughout the product allocation process.

Project Goals

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Identify top pain points in product allocation process

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Work with individual contributors to run experiments useful to their allocation problems

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Work with leadership team to run experiments useful to their allocation problems

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Improve satisfaction of this process for both users

Research Methods

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Journey Mapping

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Surveys

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Client Interviews

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Prototyping

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Journey Map

Mapping the Allocation Process

I began by creating an initial journey map of the FordLabs' allocation process from start to finish with individual contributors (GSRs) and people leaders (PL). Once validated, I then used this template for 20+ user interviews with FordLabs product managers, product designers, software engineers, and the leadership team aimed at identify areas for improvement for experimentation.

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Allocation Journey

This part of the track outlined the allocation journey at a high level to map the perspective and feelings to.

Perspective Journey

 

This column provided all the events that could happen in that portion of the journey to consider.

Capturing Feelings

This section contained the user feedback on any part of the journey to map whether the experience was positive or negative for the users.

After a few initial interviews, it became evident that the process was problematic for everyone involved. Individual contributors felt blindsided by the need to move to another product and/or accommodate another team member's move, often waiting on their people leader to determine the status of their transition. People leaders, in turn, faced challenges in allocating resources due to limited availability of either products transition to and individual contributors preferences to remain on their current products.

Opportunities

I gathered a small group of volunteer product designers to synthesize the feedback. We prioritized the feedback and divided it into actionable categories, allowing us to experiment in chunks.

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Priority 1
 

Visibility into all or most product details
 

Assumption: Priorities 2-4 will be improved if priority 1 is addressed first.

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Priority 2
 

Consistent process when onboarding/offboarding to a team
 

Assumption: Priorities 2-4 will be improved if priority 1 is addressed first.

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Priority 3

Visibility into the allocation process timeline
 

Assumption: Priorities 2-4 will be improved if priority 1 is addressed first.

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Priority 4
 

Improve communication practices between team member and people leader
 

Assumption: Priorities 2-4 will be improved if priority 1 is addressed first.

I pursued priority one with the assumption that if everyone had visibility of incoming and current products and all the relevant information a team member needed to commit to it or switch to it, that it would solve for the manual headache of allocating and resourcing for all involved.

Experiment 1

Using miro, I set up a voting and feedback experiment board to gain insight into what part of the product stage team members wanted to be involved in, what types of products they would be interested, and what information about the product did or did not resonate with them.

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In step one, users are to read the product stages and descriptions and vote on all the steps in the process they would want to be involved in. This step will identify what skillsets want to be involved where in the product pipeline.

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In step two and three, users are asked to read about all the products in the pipeline and then vote whether or not they are interested in a product or need more information to allocate themselves to it. This step will quickly identify the types of products team members gravitate toward for leadership to allocate and also try to move around resources if enough people are interested in products that need resources.

I presented the experiment results to the leadership team, and they found them highly valuable. The product manager leadership promptly integrated these insights into the official product pipeline board for product managers. Resulting in faster information transfer and faster scoped products for the FordLabs to work on. Additionally, the results inspired the software engineering team to collaborate with me on creating their own allocation board, as they desired more frequent product rotations compared to other skillsets.

Experiment 2

To make monthly allocation meetings more transparent, I created a board to provide software engineers, leadership, and the assigned product manager with full visibility into all products. The board displays who is working on each product, any requests for additional team members, and who is interested in moving to different products .

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At any time before, during, or after the meeting, a software engineer can indicate their openness to joining another team. Additionally, other teams can pitch their product if they need immediate resources. The product manager will leads these pitches, and team members can volunteer to switch teams at any point and/or stay on their team.

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Each software engineer has a card detailing their tenure on a product, allowing leadership to proactively identify when it's time for a change. These cards also provide space for engineers to list their preferred products in order of interest, making it easy for leadership to allocate resources efficiently and determine who wants to transition to which product.

This experiment streamlined the allocation process for software engineers and leadership, alleviating many of the challenges associated with resourcing. It enabled smoother adjustments, onboarding, and offboarding as higher priority products emerged.

Learnings

This research project presented substantial challenges, uncovering numerous pain points in the entire process. Yet, through close collaboration with leadership to prioritize their key allocation frustrations, I sparked a transformative shift in their team management approach. They adopted a more transparent and streamlined strategy to effectively address these issues, and we continue to iterate and improve upon these experiment boards today.

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