During any design project, teams are required to transition from a place of discovery and understanding, into clearly defined solutions. The focus shifts from gathering information, to problem solving, and systematic design delivery. This process, of bringing digital products into fruition, is not one dimensional, there are always changes on a project we need to navigate, and the most successful project teams are those that are able to adapt.

This article offers some advice on how to keep teams aligned and on track during the delivery phase of a project, even when changes occur. Whether you're a project manager, designer, or developer, we hope you'll find some useful tips to apply in your own approach.

The challenge

At Ostmodern, we recently partnered with a client on three separate, but interlocking, projects working towards the relaunch of their digital service. Each project had different objectives, stakeholders and product teams working separately, with different deadlines and workflows to best fit the brief provided. 

Having siloed design teams, became increasingly problematic during the delivery phase as the project started to change course. Initially, we were working with small in-house development teams to update the service incrementally. Midway through, the client chose to expedite development across all projects and outsourced a development team to relaunch the whole site in one go. Our separate design teams had to change course, merge together and streamline the delivery of our design into one build team.

It highlighted that many of the interaction patterns and templates we had created were very similar, but lacked standardisation. We often had multiple versions of the same thing - even though we were seemingly working from one central UI style guide. 

To resolve these issues, our separate teams needed to work more closely, to streamline our deliverables, make the product more efficient and build a more cohesive product family. It also became an opportunity to streamline their internal operations too, by demonstrating the value of better connected product teams.

Steering the ship at such a late stage in the project taught us five key lessons to bring with us into our next project, which we wanted to share with our community.

Lessons learned

Lesson 1: Centralise team tasks and consolidate different ways of working

We went from having a designated leader for each workstream, with individual ways of working, to one workstream with a team of leaders.

Centralising our daily tasks into a single platform, allowed everyone to have visibility of each other’s tasks, and spot when work was overlapping. It helped us to proactively plan in more collaborative sessions and avoid duplicating effort.

Having clear descriptions and requirements for each task also meant that team members could easily pick up each other's work if needed.

Lesson 2: Centralise documentation to ensure consistency and efficiency in design  

When joining forces, we also noticed that some of our existing designs looked very similar and had similar uses. Having lots of similar components would have made the design and build less efficient.

Setting up our documentation with clear rules that everyone could work to, gave everyone visibility of the components that were already available. It encouraged us to reuse elements that were already designed, or enhance existing elements to make them multi-functional.

Collaborating on one documentation file, and allocating rules and guidelines to facilitate remote collaboration was critical, such as the naming conventions for different types of components, annotations and highlighting when certain features were ‘in progress’ or ‘ready for review’.

Lesson 3: Share knowledge for continuity and better design 

Having worked separately for the early stages of our respective projects, we lacked some of the foundational learnings and insights from each other's projects, which would help to inform our design choices.

Presenting our user insights to the team and owning these learnings during feedback sessions, helped us to build a collective understanding of user needs, and ultimately build a better and more effective experience.

Lesson 4: Adapt the project to suit the team and foster a supportive environment

The rapid delivery schedule, whilst realigning our team, was a challenge. The number of deadlines and review points in each sprint was a lot to balance, alongside the quality and rigour of our design output.

Maintaining regular communication within the team, celebrating progress, and conducting monthly retrospectives (run by someone outside the team), helped us to continually refine our approach. 

In future, splitting out tasks into smaller chunks and staggering deliverables, will help to alleviate some of the pressure on the team while continuing to meet review deadlines. It would also give the client a more reasonable amount of work to feedback on each week.

Lesson 5: Maintain effective communication with stakeholders in order to ensure timely feedback

Keeping disparate stakeholders, in different teams and time zones, involved in the design process, in a tight time frame, was also a challenge. We needed regular input from them to ensure the designs were fit for purpose and the project on track.

Making video recordings of ourselves talking through designs and rationale, allowed various stakeholders to review our work and feedback, in a time that was more convenient for them.

Key takeaways 

Within any product organisation, separate product teams continue to be an effective way to build out and maintain digital services. However, product teams need to be mindful of the negative impact that segregation can often have on the quality and consistency of their design. The solution is to ensure that teams are much better connected, that they share resources and are more embedded in the wider organisation, to design meaningful solutions and unify the creative output.

If you're looking to streamline your design output, augment your teams to solve operational challenges, or need help bringing your digital idea into reality, get in touch.