Prior to my arrival, much of Wagepoint’s development was conducted in a waterfall process, with little collaboration between the design and engineering teams. We made efforts to change it before launch to prepare an inexperienced team for the reality of a live product: requiring alignment for new projects, frequent pivots to address high-priority issues, and unforeseen obstacles.
Identifying the problem
After interviewing members of each craft (design, engineering, content, product management, and QA), I identified several pain points:
- Teams often worked on tasks that were not aligned with the most critical business and user goals.
- Important updates and decisions were not consistently shared, causing confusion and redundant efforts.
- Coming from a waterfall process, our engineers and QA team members weren’t given the opportunity to focus on the problem, and they didn’t receive the information needed to empathize and understand the needs of our clients.
Defining a new process
I proposed a 6-phase project process, focused on solving key problems with alignment and communication.
3 key steps kept projects aligned:
- Leaders aligned on prioritize in the Prioritize phase, where I introduced scoring features with RICE (reach, impact, confidence, effort) scores
- Stakeholders within the company aligned on project scope in Propose phase
- The team aligned on their approach amongst themselves and with leadership in the Prepare phase
Explore and Prepare encouraged communication and ownership early on. Each step helped the team:
- Gain clarity by exploring together
- Practice communication with the leadership review
Since this was the first live product for some of the team, I also prepared the team for the Ship phase. This included creating documentation and videos to help the team use our self-serve analytics tools, and creating a feedback pipeline with customer support.
Change management
During a 3-week pilot on a new project, we tested the new process, gathered feedback, and made adjustments based on real-world application and team input.
Key improvements included:
- improving example proposal documents for product managers
- adding a “cheat sheet” to project review templates, to highlight key points each reviewer will often focus on
- preparing team training documentation and videos
After the pilot, we established regular check-ins for continuous improvement, focusing on enhancing the Prepare phase and encouraging open dialogue within project teams.
Impact
After three months, project process already led to multiple improvements.
Improved alignment on priorities
Leadership now actively participates in roadmap planning. Teams understand critical tasks better, enhancing focus and efficiency.
Consistent and clear communication
Regular updates and structured documentation ensure alignment across all stakeholders.
Increased interest and excitement about problems
Involving engineering and design in early phases energized the team to seek client feedback and improve solutions.