The Dawn of the Project Designer
Fresh Tilled Soil is a 30-person digital product design agency in Boston that is moving to a “value-centered” service model —that is, judging success based on customer outcomes rather than deliverables.
This is part one of a series on the process, tooling and mindset changes we’re making as part of this transition. If you’re interested in learning more and/or dropping by for a beer, get in touch with me at geordie.kaytes@freshtilledsoil.com
The PM-ocalypse
We just fired all four of our Project Managers. The overhead just wasn’t worth it. To be fair, it was mostly our fault, having hamstrung them with near-secretarial tasks to the point where it was difficult for them to find time to create real value.
Fortunately, that same day we had an immediate and critical need for four Project Designers. We were lucky enough to have the perfect candidates in the building already (in the room, in fact), and we made them each an offer:
“This job is different from your old role. You won’t have time for administrivia, or chasing people down to update their hours. That’s OK, because we’re getting rid of those things anyway. Your new responsibility will be to design projects with the client at the center, exactly the same way that we design products — by thinking of the users first. This job is a lot harder, but we think it’ll be more valuable. And more fun.”
Thankfully, they all accepted.
Why manage when you can design?
The need for dedicated, always-on project management is a symptom of a poorly-designed project. If project objectives, client communication channels, and design processes are out of sync, it takes constant effort and attention to ensure that everything stays on track and clients stay happy. Without the project manager’s cat-herding prowess, any project is mere weeks (or days!) away from total meltdown. Worst of all, “managers” are so focused on keeping the project on course that they may not have the perspective to recognize when the course itself should change.
Project design is not “project planning” any more than product design is “product planning”
This didn’t feel right. So, we decided to give our former “project managers” the power to design projects as unique as the products we build, with obsessive attention to the peculiarities of a client’s needs and situation. Instead of forcing projects into a common template, they’re applying our design approach to the project itself. Their client-centered research and needs discovery process, for example, is adapted from our user-focused methodology. This new role is as much a “design” role as any of our UX people play — hence the new title, “project designer.”
Project design is not “project planning” any more than product design is “product planning”; it’s not just a list of what needs to happen when, but rather an iterative process resulting in artifacts that will move us closer to a successful outcome. The project designer is free to play with any variables necessary to deliver maximum value to the customer, from payment terms to project objectives. By redefining the “SOW writing” part of the project as a design phase in itself, we’re giving our project designers time to carefully understand and craft the best possible way forward for the team. And during the project, just as our UX team might try a new approach after some rough user testing sessions, our project designers have the power to adapt projects on the fly to ensure that client objectives are being met.
The client is the user
Clients aren’t special. They’re just human beings, like me, or probably you. They have needs and desires — and unlike your persona “Suzy, 36-year-old housewife minivan owner,” they’re real. Yet for all our focus on the user experience, we’ve never paid nearly enough attention to the experience of the person sitting right in front of us during design reviews.
When there are multiple stakeholders on the client side, it pays even more to understand their individual motivations and (potentially-conflicting) goals. It’s the project designer’s job to build out detailed profiles, validating and refining as the project goes on. With a deep understanding of the humans on the other side of the table, the entire project team is positioned to deliver maximum happiness.
We don’t assume that we can define an entire product’s design from day one without frequent user feedback — why would we think a project’s design is any different?
By treating the client with the same understanding and respect that we accord the sainted “user,” we get a few big things for free. Most importantly, we can begin to apply our human-centered design process to the project itself. This means sketching, prototyping, testing and iterating, forgoing the need for “big design up front.” We don’t assume that we can define an entire product’s design from day one without frequent user feedback — why would we think a project’s design is any different?
Project prototyping
Sketching and prototyping in the service of product design is easy to imagine. You’ve probably done it yourself. A “project sketch” isn’t too much of a stretch beyond that; it’s a throwaway outline of one way the project might achieve the client’s goals. By testing out different combinations of approaches and objectives, the project designer can get rapid feedback from the client on what kind of engagement would be most desirable.
It’s a little harder to think of what a “project prototype” might entail. Our definition of a “prototype” is a design artifact that, through simulated or real usage, can teach us something about how to approach the final design. It’s critical that you adapt the prototype to validate a specific set of design questions — anything additional is just waste. For a project engagement where there are questions over communication styles or deliverables, a prototype might be a mini-project to test out the relationship. If the unknowns revolve more around client objectives or value perceptions, the project designer could provide several divergent visions for the end project results, and ask the client to evaluate the pros and cons of each.
Catch of the day
Before you run off and order new business cards, keep in mind: this won’t work for everybody. At the very beginning, I mentioned that we “fired” our PMs and “rehired” them as PDs. This wasn’t just a bit of rhetorical fun — the job is radically different in many ways, and we were lucky enough to have an entrepreneurial and creative PM corps who were all perfectly suited for the transition. We’ve never hired rigid, blinkered types for any position, but our former project managers have all been particularly design-oriented from the very beginning. The ideas of user-centered discovery and creation are second nature to them, both from their backgrounds and from being immersed in the process during their tenures here. The “project design” role simply changed their job descriptions to that which came naturally.
You may have project managers who can’t or won’t make good project designers. This can work out just fine — there are certain clients (either massive bureaucratic ones, or ones that are just inherently difficult) that simply need to be “managed” in the old PM style. In this case, great project design might allow these managers to take on more of these clients, but won’t totally obviate the need for hands-on cat herding.
Getting good
It’s up to the project designer to decide the best approach for building the optimal project for their “user,” the client. We give them full responsibility over the project’s outcomes, not just over the faithful execution of the SOW.
Like product design, project design is a skill that needs to be cultivated. It won’t be perfect from day one. If you make the switch, you need to give your project designers the time and tools to be introspective about their own processes and results. The post-project review is a great time for this, and should be considered as critical to PDs’ professional growth as the design review is for visual designers, or the code review is for developers.
Over the years, we’ve refined our design process while building great human experiences. Bringing this empirical knowledge and methodology to the project itself is the next step. It will ensure that, beyond producing excellent work, we’re delivering it in a way that delights the people who write the checks.
Originally published at freshtilledsoil.com — republished here by the author.
