ANGI • PROCESS • COLLABORATION
Improving XFN Collaboration
Helping to improve collaboration between design, product and engineering at Angi.
> Context
I currently oversee our 6 teams that focus on our top of funnel experience on both Angi & HA. Most of those teams work on our SEO experience and the rest work on our home, search and navigational experience. The two senior product designers I manage also work under these teams.
> Background
Before I dive into what I did, let me first share what the state of collaboration looked like when I first started at Angi. In my first weeks at Angi, a few things became clear:
Product didn’t see Design as a thought partner.
Engineering communicated through Product.
Design wasn’t seen as part of the production / product delivery team.
PROBLEM
Product didn’t see Design as a thought partner.
> What I did
I value true, authentic collaboration with my product and engineering counterparts so within my first few months at Angi, I pushed to change some of these issues. Here’s what I did:
To help us be viewed as more of a thought partner, I challenged how we wrote our Product Requirements Document (aka PRDs).
To help us be viewed as more of a thought partner, I made sure we were included in roadmap planning.
To help build stronger relationships between design and engineering, I pushed for direct communication.
To help build better teams, I pushed for design to be included in all sprint rituals.
> Impact
Since making these changes:
My designers have felt more comfortable speaking up, requesting clearer problem statements, and pushing back on poorly written ones.
Design plus other XFN partners have felt more included in the process.
Design has felt more connected to their engineering counterparts.
Designers have expressed how helpful it has been to be apart of sprint rituals.
SHOUTOUT ON SLACK
“Just wanted to shoutout @Kim Goulbourne for helping our team better collab with product! She worked some magic and got us invited to all of our product team’s meetings (grooming, stands, etc.) - it’s been SO helpful and is already saving me a ton of time on documentation, communication, etc. 🤝 A rare case where more meetings is actually a good thing haha.” ~ Angi Designer
> What’s next
I’m excited at the progress I’ve made so far at improving collaboration amongst design, product and engineering. A few other areas I want to look at next are:
We still need better project kick-offs on all levels.
We still need to merge all rituals.
We need to make these changes company-wide.
I’m already apart of a working group that’s focused on addressing some of these key areas.