- Challenge
- The team's product development process had long cycle times and was slow to deliver viable products. Solutions were often defined by product in isolation, then handed to developers, who frequently had to redefine the problem mid-build, wasting development time and eroding alignment across product, UX, and architecture.
- Role
- As project manager for the Digital Experience team, I led this initiative alongside a UX architect and a software and web application architect, working together to reshape how the team approaches problem-solving at the front end of the product development life cycle, with ongoing maintenance to sustain the shift.
- Approach
- Introduced a structured set of design thinking practices, including problem space exploration (customer interviews, affinity mapping), problem space contraction (data analysis, prioritization), and solution space activities (ideation, low-fi testing, critique), collaborating across product, UX, and architecture earlier in the process. Established a dedicated "shaping" phase where the team builds shared understanding of the real problem and explores solutions before work ever reaches a Jira board.
- Outcome
- Markedly stronger alignment between product, UX, and architecture. The practices have since spread beyond product development into broader team best practices.