Day 1-Scale Your Organization and Grow Your Designers

— Hi everyone, I’m the head of design for the data team at Amplitude, and excited to be speak about how effectively scaling a design org is growing our designers

 

— Scale is exciting for team, but even in best of times there is uncertainty, instability on top of what we have now with the economy, war, and pandemic,
  • What security means to people has changed drastically

 

— The tweet above is a common sentiment
  • People are exhausted and people are operating outside their window of tolerance
— Any change we make must be thoughtful

 

 

— People experience life 30% rationally, and 70% emotionally, and this leads our experiences

 

— Since the pandemic, there has been a 25% increase in anxiety and depression worldwide as it has been rough out there, especially for those in unrepresented communities
  • What does it mean for us?

 

 

— First we need to lead with heart: We need to practice holistic listening and connect outside the transactional workplace
  • Your people are humans with their own challenges and opportunities, not just company resources, and we need to remember this

 

— Amidst all the chaos, we need to build strong teams with resilient people who can adapt to stress and setbacks they face

 

— How to do this?
  • Employees need trust, compassion, hope, and stability in order to feel secure and engaged at work
    • Leaders don’t need to have all of the answers, and shouldn’t pretend to do so

 

— Three major components to doing this, and growing designers and scaling teams
  • Psychological safety to build resilience
  • Create a charter to provide hope, and have people feel like they are active participants in a better future
  • Structure to provide stability in reaching goals
— I’ll go over tactical ways to put these goals into practice
  • These efforts vary in terms of effort and your role

 

— First, psychological safety. Many of you have heard the term, but what is it?
  • Belief that no one will be punished for raising concerns or speaking out
  • Feeling safe that their opinion is valued, and that their environment supports it
— This is especially important for design teams as questioning the status quo is a key part of what we do
  • We need dissent without devolving into conflict, as we otherwise can’t evolve as designers

 

— At Adobe, I led a global team of designers, and had to figure out how to build a team with various cultures
  • Brought these tools from Adobe to Amplitude

 

— First thing,
  • In hybrid world, everyone puts the video on. This builds safety through inclusion
    • There is better engagement and more people speak up, and equal visibility

 

— We have icebreakers that are easy to implement
  • Range from regularly used ones, from cheesy corporate ones to Miro board ice breakers, to improv games
— These games were successful in that we shared responsibility on who would facilitate which made all responsible for the building culture

 

— We also did retrospectives, a low-medium effort that provide feedback on what’s working and what can be improved on processes, management , relationships, outside of design
  • Run these twice a year, using EasyRetro and Miro templates
— This lets us get constructive feedback on what we’re doing and how

 

— We have team skills workshop where team took stengthfinders assessment and discussed impact to team
  • Very beneficial to help designers learn about themselves
  • Built camaraderie
  • Built compassion
  • Helped us understand how to combine people with complementary strengths

 

— This is what has worked for me, but all work to build foundation of trust and compassion and a safe environment for people to speak-up grow and learn
  • I will also plug the session with Alla Weinberg in Spoken Wheel, who deals with these topics as well

 

— Next, build a charter to create hope in th midst uncertainty and instability
  • Those with a mission, and growth path for themselves less likely to churn
  • Will cover career and a personal individual charter

 

— I worked to update design org career ladder, as Amplitude was moving from startup to generational company
  • Designers were used to moving between teams in start-up, but now now needed to be intentional about career growth
— Here’s how we approached it as our team

 

— We updated operational principles for design org
  • We had the same shared top-level principles with design team and product management leaders through a common workshop
— We then wanted to have principles reflected through design or Product Management lens

 

— Used steps to create an updated career ladder
  • This is outside the norm, but worked for Amplitude
  • Worked on doc, got feedback, and had skills line-up to principles with clear bounds and expectations across levels

 

— Then worked to share it out, and use it as baseline for a performance cycle
  • Having a ladder as a baseline gave us a shared language
  • As manager, we could speak through different areas of career ladder and designer could build out a development plan for their growth to show investment as people
— As org scales, the ladder helps us recruit new designers

 

— Just as important as individual plan is, you need a team plan as well
  • Team charter answered why we existed as a team, and what our purpose was
  • Worked together asynchronously to create a team-vision deck

 

— Our final deck had four components
  • Business context on work
  • A mission statement
  • Key design principles
  • Vision concepts and what successes looked like
— This worked, and we displayed the charter all across Adobe, and explained why a design team was needed in the problem space
  • It was used to onboard new team members and helped us connect to the work we were doing
  • This helped us weather the storm of various changes

— Creating a charter creates hope to something better
  • It becomes light at end of tunnel for people to move forward

 

— Final component is to build structure to act in service of charter
  • Operational and org chart work fits here

 

— Structure lets us do our work at scale
  • Designers were previously used to working on multiple projects, and relied on tribal knowledge and connections to get things done with speed
  • This worked to a point, but not applicable at broader scale
    • As incoming manager, I couldn’t grasp projects on a person’s plate, or their latest designs
    • So it was harder for me to prioritize their work, and do capacity planning across the team
  • So I added a few new processes

 

— First we implemented JIRA
  • This was high-effort, and needed to thoughtful, and requires time and effort
  • Engineering was already using JIRA, but we’ve used other tools like Airtable
    • What matters how it’s used, and consistency of use

 

— How did we implement?
  • We would set up JIRA project dedicated to design, to have level of autonomy over work
    • Also we thought through what we need to capture on a ticket, expected statuses, labels. etc

 

— Then we documented all of it
  • Developed a consistent way to use JIRA all across the org

 

— Finally we adopted it
  • Any tool is effective based on how consistently it’s used
  • So make the tool part of your routine as a designer, such as sending the JIRA ticket instead of the Figma file
    • Consistency is key

 

— Also created quarterly planning spreadsheet that was used to make sure designers knew what they were committing to, over the course a quarter
  • Creating a week-to-week breakdown led to better timing estimates and sense of where commitment could be placed
  • Spreadsheet gave visibility on what was there for a person’s plate
— Spreadsheet could have been done in JIRA, but planning was already done in spreadsheets
  • If you want to do JIRA though, go for it

 

— This structure beyond cross-functional relationship is great for designer development, and designers can find artifacts as opposed to a person with right tribal knowledge
  • Having their work be visible helps designers grow skills in time management and setting boundaries by showing it via the JIRA board
  • Provides stability to the team, and showing incremental progress made, and an objective way for safety and support

 

 

— We are committed to scaling orgs effectively, but our role is to develop our teams
  • And building a strong team requires the practices outlined above
— Hope this talk provides a few practical tips for implementation

 

— But at the highest level, we can’t see team as resources, and need to see hardships and adversity people face—and take extra care when scaling an org

 

 

— Would love to continue this talk, so please connect. Thank you!

 

Q&A

 

  1. Can we get Miro boards?
—  Yes, there are templates in Miro
  1. How do we tie career ladder elements with promotions?
—  It’s a work in progress as all of this is fairly new, so we are taking notes to improve this over next quarter
  1. TeWhat was main outcome of the team skills workshop?
— For us, it was time to reflect on intention of designers to think about own career growth and grasping their own strengths
  • Helped teams bond and people learn more about themselves
  1. Connecting independent charters and team charters?
—  Role of the manager to do this and explaining how “where I want to go one day” in my career, can tie into organizational skills and company goals
  1. Have teams looked into integrating JIRA and Figma for fluid adoption of set-up?
— We have not, so please message me
  1. I like the video-on requirement. How to do this with teams across time-zones?
— Video on was company culture, so it’s hard for culture where it’s not embedded
  1. Chartering has come up a lot. Are there any templates approaches to recommend?
— Have a couple, but resources like Design Departments and Whole Skills Handbook from Confluence, as well as a book I will put in the channel
  1. How do you maintain JIRA and quarterly planning spreadsheet accurately? Which one is the source of truth?
— JIRA as source of truth for Figma files, and nitty-gritty look at project

 

— Quarterly planning serves as a general milestones check