Practice

Consistent UX in distributed product development

Enterprise software development is largely distributed. Solutions are built on a platform, but developed separately from it; the assembly of modules and their adaptation to customer requirements takes place downstream, in other locations. This means different teams, different departments, different companies are building something that is first a product for the customer.

Users expect software that is homogeneous , that reuses operating patterns, and that provides a consistent user experience. This is a major challenge when different departments, some of them distributed around the world, are involved and everyone participating in product development brings their own perspective to the table. As described in my previous article, a basic awareness of the topic of UX throughout the company is already a good prerequisite. How can we build on this and provide even more targeted support in terms of end-to-end UX?

UX influencing is key

Craig Villamor’s presentation “Resilient Enterprise Design” had a profound impact on my view of this challenge. Craig is a Design Director at Google and was previously responsible for the design of Salesforces software. In his presentation at the 2017 Enterprise UX Conference, he uses the four pillars of Design Principles, Platform Mindset, Design Systems, and Influencing in Product Development to show how successful UX design of resilient enterprise applications can succeed.

I would like to focus here on the last pillar, influencing. What is meant here is influencing all the players involved in product creation – at CONTACT, we call them “creators”. This support is also a central aspect of the UX strategy at CONTACT. But what does this look like in concrete terms?

Making it easy to do the right thing

It is not always a good idea to keep the design framework as large as possible: Too many design options can lead to uncontrolled growth and unnecessary inconsistencies. For example, fixed layouts for pages or control elements specify recognizable operating patterns. The manageable design options should then be explained as contextually as possible, in structures with which creators work directly – for example, right in the configuration interface. Such aids can be speaking titles and short descriptions for given layout areas, for example semantic sections in a context menu. In this way, creators can make the right decisions directly without having to go through the design documentation.

Support with the right resources

Good design documentation is also relevant: Design guidelines are the framework for design decisions in application development and configuration. It is important that they are not textbook-raised, but close to the creators’ problems. At best, the documentation for each UI component includes guidance on which use cases it is appropriate for – and which it is not. Examples show how the UI component is used correctly, for example in interaction with other UI elements.

Leading by example

Creators love examples in general: What can you do with this kit? What do possible solutions look like? CONTACT’s products offer an ever-growing number of specialized applications (Task Manager, Xbom Manager, Scheduler, Variant Management, etc.) that build on the InSync Design System and provide Creators with templates or inspiration for new solutions.

So if we provide distributed product stakeholders with guidance for design decisions, support with good application design resources and create lighthouse solutions for orientation, they can more easily create compelling products with a consistent user experience.

Complicated vs. Complex: the human factor in project management

Classic, agile or hybrid project management – what do I choose in a project? The Stacey Matrix (after the organizational theorist Ralph D. Stacey) can provide a decision support. A criteria catalog is used to assess how well a project plan is already understood – in terms of requirements on the one hand and the solution approach on the other. Are the requirements clear or are we moving into a new, as yet unknown market? Are you using a well mastered technology or a new one with which you have no experience?

Simple, complicated, chaotic?

Along these two axes, the Stacey matrix divides a project into the categories simple, complicated, complex and chaotic. According to the so-called Cynefin framework, simple systems are ordered so clearly that they can be understood immediately. Complicated systems are difficult to understand. With expert knowledge, however, it is possible to understand and predict their cause-effect relationships in advance.

Although complex systems are also determined by clear causalities, they exhibit so many interactions that even experts are no longer able to analyze them sufficiently in advance. The correlations can only be recognized and understood afterwards. A system is described as chaotic if there are no clear causal relationships and one and the same cause can produce completely different effects.

A small example illustrates this:
For a meteorologist, for example, a weather forecast for the next hour may be simple, one for the next day complicated. A forecast for the next week, on the other hand, might be a complex problem, while the forecast for one day of the next year is certainly a chaotic one.

As long as project plans are simple or complicated, they can be well mastered with a waterfall like, firmly predefined procedure depending on the expertise. However, the more they tend towards complexity, the more an agile, flexible approach with many feedback loops and the possibility of trial and error is recommended. I think this is a plausible approach, which, by the way, can be applied not only to entire projects, but also selectively to individual areas in a project.

The social dimension

But perhaps this approach is not quite enough. We have talked about requirements and about approaches to solutions, but not yet about the people who work together in the project. Isn’t their organizational and social interaction also simple, complicated or complex to chaotic? And doesn’t this factor have the same major impact on the success of the project? In my opinion, this is precisely the point at which one must speak of unpredictability, i.e. complexity.

A well-rehearsed team that has been working together for years can certainly be classified as easy. However, it is often forgotten that hardly predictable dynamics can occur in a newly assembled team or in a new cooperation of different departments with different interests. Here, agile methods with their focus on results-oriented communication can be the key to mastering the project.

So perhaps we should add a third dimension, “social interaction”, to the two axes “requirements” and “solution approach” in order to complete the decision model and lay the foundation for project success.

Context is King – virtual collaboration in product development

The past two months have given the topic of virtual collaboration an enormous boost. The Corona crisis has forced everyone to deal with this topic. And the conclusion is consistently positive!

In the first few weeks, the main task was to create the possibilities for virtual collaboration. Now it is a matter of continuing to use the potential of these possibilities after the return to “normality”. What’s even more: many companies are taking the experience they have gained as an opportunity to rethink their structural and process organization and to further digitalize business processes.

Special case product development

While common office solutions in combination with video conferencing are easy to use in areas such as administration, marketing or sales, they often reach their limits in product development. One reason for this is, among others, the high level of interdisciplinarity in this area. Many different specialist teams have to work together at the same time and on several projects. Added to this is the high complexity of the work objects, which are often developed as structures and have many different relationships with each other. In order to work together productively under these conditions, the possibilities of the usual IT tools are not sufficient.

New requirements for IT tools

Intelligent platform solutions for collaborative product lifecycle management (PLM), which enable context-related interdisciplinary work, provide a remedy here. Context-related means that all work objects are linked to each other and can be called up at any time in the work process and from any context. Analysts like Gartner speak of content collaboration tools. This means that you can navigate from one work item to all neighboring work items without having to search and ask questions. This guarantees efficient and valid collaboration, especially in distributed teams.

Intelligent platform solutions offer yet another advantage in collaboration: a common environment in which all project participants can inform themselves and view changes directly. Cross-team chat functions, so-called activity streams, support the consistent exchange of information on the current status of the project. Especially in virtual collaboration, this guarantees a continuous flow of information, which in most cases more than compensates for the lack of “office grapevine” or the meeting at the coffee machine. Gartner has a term ready for this, too, which is Workstream Collaboration.

Another key component of intelligent platform solutions is the use of integrated task boards, which allow development teams to organize their tasks independently. In the past, task lists with several hundred entries were often used. Today, task boards allow only important milestones or quality gates to be set, but leave the individual tasks within the milestones to the teams themselves. This allows an interdisciplinary, distributed team to carry out a joint weekly planning on screen in virtual sessions, e.g. via Zoom.

The main advantage of integrated task boards is the direct linking of to-do cards on the boards with the work objects. This avoids not only the time-consuming search for the appropriate work objects, but also error and version risks. These additional expenses and risks usually occur with purchased individual solutions.

Conclusion:

The Corona crisis has prepared the ground for the continuous expansion of virtual collaboration – also in product development – from now on. Product development places special demands on IT tools for efficient virtual collaboration. Especially working in context is a decisive productivity factor here. Selected intelligent platform solutions for collaborative PLM already meet these requirements today.