DesignOps 2020: Design Staffing for Impact (Session Notes)

Speaker: Patrick Commarford, Design Principal, IBM

— Thank you everyone, and excited to be here.
— Challenges for staffing approach and action we have taken and improvements experienced
— Hope you are experiencing similar challenges that strategies employe can help

— Always want to staff projects with talent deserved, but don’t have people
— Need to make sure you are maximizing the impact to your organization

 

An Introduction

— The IBM CIO provides centralized IT department and own strategy, tools, work-stations, devices and infrastructure

— Company CIO is heavily focused on employee experience.
— Less friction in IT activities allows IBMers to focus on providing solutions

— Each domain has its own leader and portfolio and mission
— CIO design is smallest with 150 practitioners and optimize with all others across portfolios
— Partner with role of design advisor akin to design program manager for each portfolio
— Build expertise within domain portfolio and figure out best way to elevate experiences in what they own

— Ran into following problem where demand for support outpaced capacity.
— We continue to experience this as demand increases
— Created simple process for which projects are going to be staffed
— Design advisor would work with VP of domain and teams to create a request, and request would articulate needs of project
— Including solution and what designers do, and everything else
— All worth doing, but needed to know whether they would approve or reject the work
— Worth it to allocate resources, as anything approved would go into queue

 

The Problems

— No criteria was formally documented or defined or published
— Many stakeholders felt decisions were mysterious, didn’t know why Project A was accepted and B rejected
— Rejected project teams were in a state of limbo and unsure of what needed to be done

—Since we wanted to support as much as possible we approved too much and had unacceptable wait times
— Had the design team become the DMV of IBM? This was not desired.
—Outcome of long queue is by time designer arrived, time for meaningful impact had passed
— No design team wants to be there

— Designers were often stretched too thin in projects
— Bad for project teams and bad for team members

— There was level of uncertainty as to whether right decision could be made in alignment with strategy

— Took a step back and needed clear way to prioritize work
— Needed to measure that goals were being achieved.
— Staffing to priorities. Needed to define certain things

— First, which projects are we talking about (as CIO portfolio was filled with hundreds of project)
— Focused on top 100/150 projects that were on their radar
— Approve reject or approach, and listing out variables and approval decisions.
— Two attributes stand-out from the rest: number of users, and frequency application was used

— Design needed to figure out how many users out there, and how users were using the tool
— Frequently used tools would have bigger aspect on experience
— Clearly two most important variables. Most objective and quantifiable, and were subjective
— Built out to five-level of priority
(Priority 1 to Priority 5)
— Reviewed list with CIO and VP of each domain, and consensus arrived on modifying percentage of priority
— For examples projects aligned with a specific focus area

— Needed to figure out right way of staffing, and relied on design advisors
— Built out expertise and identify ideal staffing by skill
— Percent staff and sign divided by ideal

— Design needed  a way to define success
— (Ideal relationship) Higher priority and more staffing
— Created a design staffing score with priority and percent staffed
— Ranges from correlation range of -1 to 1
  • 200 point scale similar to NPS
— Anything below zero is where staffing is misaligned
— Anything above 30 is good relationship
— But for staffing to directly align needed a score of 80

— After leg-work had prioritized set of projects
— Went and calculated base-line score  of 44
— Score was good, but had room for improvement and felt it could be pushed to 80
— Now could move forward with improvements and actions

— Identified users with lower priority projects, and filling in gaps people had
— Beneficial to IBMers and their goal of supporting each other, and making as big an impact as they possibly can

— Rather than leaving low priority projects hanging, gave clear direction and guidance
— Had gold standard support model.
— Reserved for priority 1-3 tools and services
— Less time supportive options available for 4 and 5
  • Even 45 minute consultation is better than nothing
  • Expectations properly set
— If you can do something similar, it is highly recommended

 

The Results

— Prior project selection process caused confusion on part of the staff

— Moved to new process with full transparency throughout, and when request came in priority was calculated, and people understood what to expect
— When stakeholders meet, not just discussion of approval or rejection, but instead adjustment of priority
— Once priority is confirmed or defined. Go to transparent prioritized queue.
— Focus on level of support that can be received.

— Breaking down gaps by skills and priority gives clear idea of what is needed to hire
— Clear what needs to be done to fulfill gaps

— Lot of hours and lot of people, and wondered if it needed to be done
— Most certainly has been (things are now automated, and now it’s a matter of regularly using application)

— Had satisfaction grow and now close to 80
— Ultimate goal is not to put designers on projects, but maximize impact on IBMer experience
  • Experience Index
  • Employee Engagement Analysis
  • Other Score that will be tracked with hope of prioritizing right projects, acceleration positive impact

 

— Often asked to talk through to how approach would be applied to their context

 

— Recommend you start with mission areas and goals of organization
— Align on key objective metrics that will drive prioritization
— Weight and map to priority levels
— Farm decision making body and process for priority adjustments
  • Create a decision making body (ideally leadership level) that can adjust priorities
—If committee adjusting high-level percentage of projects, you can tweak formula
  • Shouldn’t be a debate about subjective metrics
— Continuously get feedback, assess and refine
— Communicate what is done to stakeholders, do it frequently, and stay transparent throughout

 

Questions

  1. How to convince leadership that associate experience is as important as external customers?
— Lucky in that leadership didn’t need to be convinced, and CIO has always seen role as providing productive environment for IBMers, and made it his North Star
— Internal metrics on how much time different tests take and productive engagement of employees.
— Path has been paved from leadership at top, focus on fulfilling mission
  1. How to frame conversations with leadership to fight “Don’t take my designers away from me”.
— Began with clear communication
— Designing and delivering great experiences as part of top-level OKR that leadership agrees is important.
— This has helped drive what’s important and what needs to be done for the year
— Number of problems before, where they had queues and there were fights about who got which designer
— People were welcomed to create approach where priorities articulated, and people will be brought into the loop
  • Opportunity to review list with peers and question why a specific priority was assigned
— By time process done, people will go through a list
— Some domains could lose a designer on lower priority project, but gain designer on higher priority project
  1. Program view of work? How does team look for company wide efficiency, i.e. preventing duplicative effort, and shared learnings across the team?
— In terms of efficiencies and duplication at project portfolio. Portfolios focus on typical set of domains
— Design advisors are focused on specific portfolio.
  • We have meetings once a week, where we talk about topics associated with a portfolio, and making sure teams are talking to each other and that missions are taking place
—For sharing knowledge, they have internal “focal points” that are used for design and user experience review, and accessibility focal point
— Responsible for providing assets and guidance for organization
  • Allow office hours for any week
— Run design guilds and share across team
  1. If design resources allocated and scope of project changes, can you reassess on priority?
— Yes, you rely on advisors, and the designers themselves
— Designers are encouraged to speak out on what are highest priority to work on
— Figuring out staffing records and what’s up to date
— Over-staffing what needs to be done