How to reshuffle a design team in the time of crisis
The framework and steps I followed when redistributing our design resources.
Whether you are ready to, comfortable with, excited by, anxious of, or frightened by change, it is safe to say that we were all caught off-guarded by this pandemic. COVID-19 introduced an unprecedented multi-dimensional impact on our lives. And we all had to react as quickly as possible, introducing a great amount of change to our social and professional lives.
At ClearScore, we managed to switch smoothly to remote working. Nonetheless, the whole business had to shift gears swiftly and change priorities in a flash. That meant some projects had to be stopped, or paused, while new ones started — leading to the need to re-allocate our resources.
Our design team is distributed across delivery squads, and all of a sudden we had to gather our cards, reshuffle our deck and distribute them again.
Here is how we approached this.
(Note: Although I applied the below with a design team in a mid-sized business, I believe that this framework can be followed — or serve as the foundation — for the resource allocation of any functional team at almost any size.)
Start Here
Who should be involved?
The answer depends mainly on the size of your team and the depth of knowledge that you have. In our case, we were about 30 team members in the design team, and hence the heads had a good understanding of our designers’ knowledge and expertise. Also, we had just finished a team-wide skills and capabilities mapping exercise, so we had a pretty solid understanding of our team members’ personalities and strengths.
Hence, our workshop’s participants were the Design Heads and me (DesignOps Manager).
In bigger teams and/or where you lack such a level of in-depth knowledge about the individuals, you may want to run a couple of activities (e.g. surveys or workshops) to collect more information about the individuals’ skills, capabilities, personalities, and area of expertise.
The magic
Set your principles first
Before you start thinking about the individuals and the upcoming projects, you should kick-off by discussing and agreeing on a set of principles. Those will be your guiding rules — they are things that you deem important to your team, and company dynamics and culture.
Just principles conceive just notions and perform good actions in consequence of them.
― Hugh Blair
Ours were:
1- No single point of failure. Projects are extremely important and time-sensitive now. By preventing a single point of failure, we are protecting, not just the business, but people too — shielding them from additional stress and anxiety.
2- Solve for personalities. Moving to full remote working has introduced a novelty to the ways things are done (and maybe a bit of confusion and complexity at the beginning). Matching individuals’ personalities would enable them to lean on each other and worry less about how to build their relationship with their peers during the lockdown.
3- Balance skills and product knowledge. As a DesignOps Manager, a big part of my role is enabling people and improving efficiency without jeopardising quality. This reshuffle is about enabling our squad to deliver as quickly and as efficiently as possible. Balancing skills and product knowledge will enable the business to achieve its goals and will allow our designers to do so while maintaining quality.
4- Mix seniority. Peer-to-Peer feedback and learning was a value that was repeatedly highlighted during my workshops with the design team. Making sure that we mix seniority in our squads is one of the ways to make sure that we maintain that value.
5- Maintain and split for team performance. Having this principle in place is a necessary reminder to ourselves, and others, that nothing is set in stone. It enables us to break, or maintain, our reshuffled matches to optimise squads’ performance.
The skillset that will make all the difference
Having set and defined your principles, you are now ready to drill deeper. Dive into a pool of skills, identify and define the most required skills to answer to your business needs.
For us, we looked for the skills that will enable our paired designers to become a power within their new teams, in the new projects, and under the new ways of working. A power of productivity and efficiency, whilst being the guardians of our design quality and our users’ voice. Our skillset was:
a) Design System. Knowledge and fluency of our Design System. the ability to capitalise on its power for quick and consistent delivery, while maintaining quality.
b) Domain knowledge. Breadth and depth of knowledge of the product and their expertise in certain sub-sectors and specific technologies.
c) Design Process. Mastering our design process — at speed and remotely. That includes capabilities like — but not limited to — remote facilitation, running lightning design sprints, rapid ideation, speedy hi-fi wireframing, fast prototyping, and strong copywriting.
d) Resilience. Facing new realities with patience and kindness, and without ego. The ability to build and maintain friendships, and to be proactive and diplomatic.
e) Design management. Strong people-management set of skills and to be a master and being a champion of Abstract (our design version control tool).
f) Communication. High-level of organisational skills. Meticulous and thorough in their documentation. The ability to give focused and constructive design feedback.
g) Data and research. Fluent in our suite of user testing tools. Strong data analysis acumen and Skilled at conducting lean research.
Mapping and scoring
This last bit consists of three steps:
1) Choosing your cornerstone.
2) Grouping individuals and assigning them to projects.
3) Scoring and optimising.
During and after each of these steps, you need to check that you are adhering to your principles.
Given the current climate and being aware of the impact COVID-19 brought upon us — both on business and personal levels — we decided that Resilience is our cornerstone on which we will build our resource mapping.
We grouped our designers into twos and threes based on their Resilience level. Once we had our first ‘mix and match’, we then mapped these against the business’ upcoming projects.
Next, we scored these teams on each of the skills mentioned above. Finally, grouping people to optimise the average scores of each team.
What’s next
Once you are done, you need to make sure that you have what you need when you review the groups.
For instance, you need a ‘definition of success’ for these new groups and the data to support it. In my scenario, some of that came from surveys and some from tools like Abstract and Jira. Metrics are a story for another day.
One last thing to remember!
This exercise is heavily reliant on your, and your participants’, knowledge of the team’s streams of work (past, present, and future). And more importantly, you are relying on the detailed and intimate insights you have on your team members’ skills, capabilities, expertise, and personalities.
Preparation doesn’t assure victory, it assures confidence.
― Amit Kalantri
This process wouldn’t have been as successful without the support of Simon Doggett and Tai and their great in-depth knowledge of our Design team.
