Product Design Process Defined

When I joined Paramount, I quickly learned that there was a lot of work to do to improve upon the design maturity of the team. Clearly articulating a process, and phases within the process, was desperately needed to create alignment with product management, engineering, and the project management organizations. The below process was not intended to be aspirational, rather, it is a direct reflection of what the team was capable of and could be held accountable for.

We created a simple tool to help us quickly identify and estimate the level of complexity and amount of time it would take to complete each design project and/or initiative. The yellow numbered boxes represent 2 week sprints throughout any given quarter. The small, medium, and large sizes represent the number of sprints we estimate it would take to solve a design problem. For example, a medium sized project could take up to 4 sprints (or 8 weeks) to complete.

The result of the defined process helped us to create the most accurate (estimated) plans to date for the design team. It also enabled the most transparency and inclusion across the streaming org, as the plans were shared with everyone to gain alignment on delivery and dev handoffs.

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