tales from a balanced team

SpringOne 08.02.16

With Alex, Jim, and Josh

abasson@pivotal.io jathomson@pivotal.io jfranklin@pivotal.io

Tales from a Balanced Team

Balanced Team Values

Create Trust Share Experiments Celebrate Failure Diverse Voices

About Pivotal Labs

● Small, multi-disciplinary teams (Product Manager, Engineers, Product Designer)

from Pivotal and Clients

● Projects are both execution and enablement, we teach and work fast!

● Clients work on-site with us

● Cross discipline pairing

● User centered design (user interviews, personas, experiments, synthesis)

● All these things combined make us great agile/lean teams

The ProjectSmall Token app

The Client

Give Lively - a nonprofit looking to change the way people give. This was their first product.

The Problem

As our world becomes more materialistic, how might we create a simple and instant way for givers to

express gratitude in a more meaningful way?

The Project

Give Lively and Pivotal developed an application called Small Token that makes it easy and quick to

give a donation to a nonprofit on behalf of someone you care about.

Product Manager Designer Engineers Client PM Stakeholders

The Team

1 1 4 1 2

The Timeline

Research Kickoff

Sep. 29th, 2015

Development Kickoff

Oct. 13th, 2015

MVP LaunchGiving TuesdayDec. 1st, 2015

Milestone 1Gift Customization

Dec. 16st, 2015

Milestone 2Photo Customization

Jan. 13st, 2016

DisengagementJan. 22nd, 2016

8 weeks

Balanced Tales

Collaborative Research

During our research phase, engineers, designers and PM’s participated in user interviews and synthesis sessions. This allowed us all to gain more empathy for end users and insight that helped suggest tech solutions and platforms.

The people who do the research are those that build the product.

UNBALANCED

Research may be done outside of the project, and team members may not participate

BALANCED

“Minimum Approvable Product”

David, our Client PM, had done research in the App Store guidelines, and was aware of a special rule requiring charity apps to accept payment outside of the app. But guidelines are vague.

This prompted us to create a “Minimum Approvable Product” to submit as early as possible to ensure our app would be approved.

Business and Tech Concerns are Intertwined

UNBALANCED

Tech decisions follow business decisions

BALANCED

Diversity of knowledge is shared

UNBALANCED

Knowledge is siloed

BALANCED

Sketching Studio

We did a sketching/design studio during our Discovery and Framing process after identifying key users and working through scenarios. This helped us collectively arrive at a MVP workflow for giving a gift that incorporated UI ideas from across the team.

All members of the team are given an opportunity to provide design ideas

UNBALANCED

Designers pitch mocks over the wall to implement

BALANCED

Story Time

For every project we meet as a team once a week to discuss prioritization of stories. On a few occasions, design set aside time to pair with the Pivotal PM and client PM on writing stories and fleshing out acceptance criteria.

All team members have input into how features are broken down into stories, and their priority

UNBALANCED

Business decisions drive requirements, and their priority, without regard for complexity or user value

BALANCED

Design/Dev Pair

Throughout the project there were times where it was necessary for design and engineering to pair on complex user flows.

For example, Alex approached me one afternoon about some unknown complexity with cropping photos within the app. The next afternoon we spent a few hours pairing together in xcode spiking the cropping interaction for multiple screen sizes.

Everyone has a responsibility for the success of the product, so we work together as necessary to make it happen

UNBALANCED

Roles are typically siloed, and disciplines stick to their sole responsibilities

BALANCED

Thanks!

ARCHIVE

Where to sign up?

Product and design had made a workflow decision about account registration. A developer raised an important concern about this decision’s impact on payment conversion. We immediately broke out as a team to discuss the implications of this decision on product, design and technology.

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Take-away

All team members should feel empowered to influence product, design, and development decisions.