Product & UX - Speaker Deck

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Product & UX UX Belfast March 2022

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Me Sully

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We all want to create awesome things that people love.

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Myths and bull💩

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● The Product Manager is not the CEO ● No one person / role ‘owns’ the relationship with the user ● No one person / role ‘owns’ discovery ● We are not fricking unicorns, or rockstars - we are human beings ● Anything else?

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Expectations about who does what and why can be different

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Titles and roles cause so…much…confusion!????

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● Titles can be meaningless? ○ …or very meaningful! ● Large range of skills, experience, personal preferences ● What is Product and where does it live? ● What is UX and where does it live?

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Take it back to basics: What is Product Management?

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“delivers user and business value by solving a problem”

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To build a successful product…

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user (usable/ desirable) technology (feasible) market (viable) product team

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https:/ /www.departmentofproduct.com/ https:/ /productcoalition.com/the-10-best-and-worst-venn-diagrams-explaining-product-management-f6006c82476c

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A lot of skills are required

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Move to the generalist role of ‘product designer’

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Seniority causes more overlap across UX and Product skills

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There is no ‘one right way’ to do anything

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Context is queen

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● business size & model ● location or distribution of people ● working style ● product type ● organisation structure ● organisation understanding / experience of product or ux ● individual skills, experiences, preferences ● stage of the product life cycle ● processes & tooling ● team mix ● team capacity

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Being delivery focused forces roles into a smaller domain space

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Functionally separate teams or companies ● UX/Design as an external agency or consultancy. ● UX/Design is the expert and can be more directive / lead. ● Non collaborative

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Different functions or teams within the same company ● UX is in house as a service to other teams

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‘One team’ … in silos ● Different functions are grouped together to deliver a project or product , but aren’t working collaboratively (yet) ● Can result in ‘waterfall’ type behaviour as teams hand off to each other ● Can cause distrust and dysfunction

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So - what’s worked for me?

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And… what can we use to organise?

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Empowered Product Trio

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There is a lifecycle - and a range of things that need to happen

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Problem Solution Build Launch Learn Business Grow Pivot Die Optimise

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Red Flags “The Bad & Ugly”

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● Lack of leadership steer or support ● Command and control culture ● Desire for hierarchy or control ● Product title - project or delivery lead role ● Feature factories ● Silos / Turf wars ● Lack of trust or respect ● Lack of collaboration ● Unhealthy conﬂict due to inability to communicate or feedback

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You should leave toxic environments

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Survey says! Things to think about…

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● Title ● Reporting lines ● Team set up ● Process / Methodologies ● Tooling ● Enablers ● Blockers

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● If individual is specialist prefer specialist title ● “Product designer” is preferred to UX designer by majority of UX people as it indicates the role is multi-disciplinary ● Dislike of Product title being used when it's a delivery lead role ● Confusion over Product Manager and Product Owner Title

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● Trend for UX roles to report into product ● Followed by UX/Design ● Dislike of reporting into other functions ● Product tends to report into product, or a ‘business’ function ● Day to day work can be managed by a mix of functions and sometimes this causes issues for visibility for the people manager Reporting lines

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● Real mix! ● Few project teams ● Few scrum teams ● One or two ‘empowered trios’ ● Angst with lack of empowerment to make decisions ● Frustration with lack of inclusion / visibility Team set up

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● ALL the methodologies (bar weirdly Waterfall) ● LOTS of tools! Methodolgies & Tooling

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● Clarity of expectations ● Collaboration - full team working sessions ● Need for discovery / data to be respected ● Being empowered ● Being trusted ● Complete transparency ● Senior managers aware of workloads ● Focus time Enablers to do my job

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● Leaders decide what to build ● Being given a solution to build ● No access to customers ● Red tape ● Misaligned goals ● Too much time focusing on processes and tooling ● Not using people’s full skills or potential ● Too large a workload ● Last minute asks / Reactive culture ● Design being an after thought and not included as a peer ● Sales pivoting the roadmap Blockers

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Principles that help: collaboration, communication, culture, compromise

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● Pair! ● Light and ﬂexible processes ● Support a culture of trust and psychological safety ● No assumptions - continually realign and give context ● Don’t use role or position as rationale for a decision ● Communicate, communicate, communicate ● Data informed ● Understand yourself fully ● Focus on healthy team (not individual functions)

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We all want…

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● Expectations to be set ● Goals to be agreed ● Alignment ● To be included and appreciated ● Good communication ● To feel empowered to do our jobs

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Thank you for listening & Thank you for the folks who helped me create this :D