Designers, Developers and Dogs: Finding the magic balance between product and tech - Charlotte Vorbeck, ShareNow and Sahil Bajaj How can an agile delivery team become a successful product team? When does collaboration between product and tech succeed and when not? Why do people in some teams inspire each other while others in the same environment don't speak the same language? In this talk we want to share our learnings and experiences from rebuilding an internal tool for customer support at ShareNow. What could have been just another boring rewrite surprisingly became one of our best experiences in collaboration. We will look at how a joint discovery phase helped us to come up with a shared vision, how a better team setup enabled us to do the necessary work, how focusing on the customer kept us aligned during our journey, and also how we built upon existing collaborative techniques to achieve this new level of cooperation and trust.

1. Finding the magic balance between product and tech
Designers, Developers and Dogs
#YConf2020

2. A Case Study
Sahil Bajaj
Developer at ThoughtWorks
Charlotte Vorbeck
UX Designer at ShareNow

3. Carsharing - for fewer cars in the city
get the app and start
driving
3 Mio customers in Europe
16 cities in 8 countries
12,000 vehicles

4. MOpS!
Mobility Operations Suite

5. MOpS!
Mobility Operations Suite
● Tool for customer support agents
● Search, overview, rentals, payments,
driver licenses
● Replace legacy BackOffice system:
- Difficult to release changes
- Built with no UX support
- More than 7 interdependent teams

6. Shorten
lead
times
Reduce
call
time
Simplify
development
Provide better
support
MOpS
will…

7. It was
successful!
In time
Beta phase after 4,5 months,
Rollout to all users after 6 months
Good adoption
50% of the user journey has moved
into new tool
5 teams already started integrating
Feedback
Happy users
Integrating teams like us
Stakeholders happy to collaborate
yeah, you were one of the
best teams that I worked
with and kept me
motivated

8. And a lot of fun!

9. Why was it
such a good
experience?
Hey Charlotte! MOpS was one of my best projects in
ThoughtWorks so far - thanks for the great experience!
Hey Sahil, for me too!
It felt like we were really in the flow 🙌
Yes and there was this good energy around. I wonder what made
it so different? 🤔
Yes, I felt there was so much trust and respect for each other.
The project was quite unusual – maybe we should do a talk about
it!

10. 10 Unique Things
That Made Our
Product Awesome
You Won’t Believe What
Happened Next!

11. Get out of the building (and take the developers with you)
Reframe the problem around customer support processes
Synthesize learnings visually (maps)
Doing product
discovery
together
1

12. Get out of the building (and take the developers with you)
Reframe the problem around customer support processes
Synthesize learnings visually (maps)
Doing product
discovery
together
1

13. Get out of the building (and take the developers with you)
Reframe the problem around customer support processes
Synthesize learnings visually (maps)
Doing product
discovery
together
1

14. Alignment workshop (team + management)
Informed by discovery work, experience, previous
research
Collaborative decision making
Management very supportive and leading by example
Getting buy-in
from everyone
2

15. Setting up a
balanced
team
3
Other Teams
High focus on solving
technical problems, less
effort in understanding and
solving the user problems
DEV
DEV
DEV
PO
UX
Enough resources to do the
required research and
development work
BA
DEV
DEV
DEV
DEV
DEV
UXUX
PO
DEV
Taking "full stack" to the
product team
MOpS Team
DEV
DEV

16. Know where to focus effort
Don’t be too fixed – make it a
discussion
Reevaluate!
Discussing
ways of
working
Meetings
Practices
Travel
Roles
and
Responsibilities
4

17. Building user feedback loops
Direct
communication:
interviews, round
tables, surveys,
regular field visits
Set up feedback
channels: Slack,
ServiceDesk,
hotjar feedback
Beta rollout
phase, including
first look sessions,
and 1:1 feedback
Started gathering
metrics for old
and new systems
5

18. De-risking
user
journeys
Transition strategy to
keep amount of
construction sites low
“What do we
need to
understand in
order to be
more
confident?”
Prototype or
production?
Prototype can validate
ideas, but only
production code will
replace a working
system
Technical de-risking:
user journey in thin
vertical slices, no
mocking
6

19. Needed more process to coordinate who does what
Transparency around activities, progress and effort
Enables communication inside and outside the team
Involving devs earlier to find better ideas
Making shaping work
visible
7

20. Pairing with everyone
Align multiple
perspectives right
from the start
Co-construct problem
understanding and
solutions
Validate thinking,
share knowledge
8

21. Overcoming mental borders
Pick up work out of
the comfort zone
Don’t get stuck on the
roles
Avoids bottlenecks
9

22. Making some
noise
Talk to each other!
Safe, trusting environment
Low egos
10
It is not only work!
Learn to dance salsa
Support each other in
a pandemic crisis

23. 6
1
8
3
2
7
4
9 10
5
Setting up a
balanced
team
Getting
buy-in from
everyone
De-risking
user
journeys
Making
shaping
work
visible
Pairing with
everyone
Discussing
ways of
working
Overcoming
mental
borders
Making
some noise
Building
user
feedback
loops
Doing
product
discovery
together
10 Unique Things That Made Our Product Awesome

24. 8
2 4
10
Be a good
team
Have an
aligned
strategy
Have a
collaborative team
doing the work
together
Shape your
idea before
you bet on it
Focus on
collective
results rather
than individual
goals
Test only
your biggest
risks
Understand what
is valuable,
usable and
feasible
Get the right
kind of user
data in every
stage of your
product

25. How can we make these practices
more common?
Building a collaborative
culture – maybe starts with
hiring?
Constantly understanding
the customer feels
time-consuming
Shift from output to
outcome?
What skills to invest in when
moving from projects to
products?
Flow and value vs.
utilization
The thought that an engineering team might be sitting
around with nothing to do but play Foosball just drives
management nuts. Ironically, it is precisely this reasoning
that leads directly to wasted engineering resources —Marty
Cagan

26. And if I had to bet on which teams were most likely
to build great products, I’d bet on the collaborative
team every time.
Teresa Torres - ProductTalk
Collaboration
is better!
#YConf2020