The Essence of Order in a Chaotic Startup Design World

Where chaos and order collide, beauty is born. A story uncovering my learnings about frameworks, structures, operations, processes, and the dire need to be organized while working in a fast-paced startup design world.

Planets align in the cosmos, amidst all the chaos

I have been working as a Senior Product Designer at a start-up for the past three years. My daily job deals with building generation-one autonomous drone fleet management solutions, and I have come to learn that chaos is just a part of the job. However, amidst all the craziness in the startup design world, there is one thing that has consistently helped me navigate the choppy waters of this world: the essence of order.

It all started on a typical Monday morning. I stumbled into the office, still half asleep, and was greeted by the usual chaos. The team was running around like headless chickens, trying to put out various fires and meet deadlines. My slack was overflowing with messages, Asana’s to-do list was doom-scroll long, and I had a meeting in five minutes.

“Good morning, peeps!” I said to my team as I came in and sat down at my desk, trying to gather my thoughts, when my teammate rushed up to me with a crazy look in her eyes. “We have a problem,” she said. “One of our stakeholders just changed his mind about the entire direction of the project. We have to start from scratch.”

Boom. I felt a wave of panic wash over me. How were we going to complete the project on time with such a major change? When will the developers pick up this project? What will we have to say to our customers? It’s everything, everywhere, all at once.

As I have grown and gained more experience, I have realized that when life throws lemons at you, you can turn lemons into lemonade. Of course, it’s natural to feel some initial panic, but it’s important to take a step back and assess the situation before jumping into action. By doing this, you can approach the challenge with a clear mind and come up with a plan to resolve it effectively.

Fast forward to today: Despite the challenges of working through numerous sleepless nights fueled by coffee and Maggi, we managed to deliver the project, though a little late. But the solution we provided not only met but exceeded the customer’s expectations!

This is a classic example of how chaotic the startup-design world can be. If you work in a start-up, some of the common sources of chaos in the design world that you may experience include:

• Tight deadlines
• Design process setbacks or problems
• Shifting design directions based on requests from clients, stakeholders or internal teams
• Unclear communication and collaboration via scopes, design briefs, etc.
• Limited resources or budget constraints

Looking for a solution

“Set up structures and processes, and things will automatically fall into place,” said my company’s Director of Product, explaining how I should manage a team. At that time, I was struggling with time management, which was affecting the team’s management. Most of my time went into reviewing designs that my team made.

“So let’s try to be more organized,” he said as he rose from his seat, “and let’s work on setting up an efficient system and getting things moving forward. Tell me if you need any help.” The discussion that had turned into a meeting finally ended, and I had a lot to figure out.

It was almost 9:40 p.m. by then. I came back to my desk, grabbed my car keys, and packed my laptop to head home. As I drove back, I wondered, ‘There are a thousand pieces that I need to put into place, but a million questions that I need answers to first!’

Back home, it was time for my favorite part of the day—time to be all alone! All relaxed, I lay on the bed as I picked up the speaker to put on some chill after-work beats, and then ordered some delicious Rajma chawal on Swiggy. Done. 5 minutes of Instagram, and then I’ll get back to work. Before I knew it, half an hour had passed, and I was still scrolling through my feed, completely absorbed in the endless stream of content. Yep, doom-scrolled again. It’s not my fault that the algorithm kept showing me cute dog posts and hilarious memes. “Let’s get back to work now,” I told myself, “the hustle never stops.”

I started to unpack my bag and set up my work desk. Some time passed, and I was still staring at the blank FigJam board in front of me. Sighing, I leaned back on my chair. This seems like a system design problem. “It’ll be easier if I map out everything.” I thought. Let’s do this. I worked on it for about 15 minutes, and then I heard the doorbell ring, Ting-Tong. “Hmm... interesting,” I said, reflecting as I left to get the food.

After I came back, I identified the key touchpoints wherein we could potentially bring in ‘order.’ Like my company’s director had said, fundamentally, everything that we do at a startup can be categorized into two segments, the first being “Frameworks and Structures,” and the second being “Operations and Processes.”

Startups operate in fast-paced, dynamic environments. “Frameworks and Structures” are an important part of a designer’s daily work life. To ensure the effectiveness of this, it is important to focus on:

1. Effective decision-making
2. Efficient team management
3. Clear communication & collaboration

Teams can minimize potential risks and deliver a better product output by having clear and well-defined “operations and processes." To achieve this, it is important to focus on:

1. Streamlined design process
2. Efficient daily task management and project goals
3. Controlled experimentation
4. Regular tracking and reviews

Let’s take a deep dive into each of these topics in the next section.

Evolving, discovering and testing ideas

Frameworks & Structures

Effective decision-making

Decision-making is often decentralized in a startup. This makes the quality and speed of a decision have a great impact on the product over time. The direction and outcome of the product are influenced by decision-making.

A structure acts like guidelines. As designers, effective decision-making is essential to ensure success. Here are some ways to enhance the structure of the decision-making process:

1. Discuss and align the team’s decisions taken at different steps during a design process. It’s important for everyone to be on the same page. A shared vision leads to a better outcome.
2. Avoid costly mistakes and rework by thoroughly researching and considering all options before making a decision. Prioritize and balance all the conflicting requirements, such as design direction, technical feasibility and customer needs. Do not forget, speed is also important when you are working at a startup.
3. Make informed and strategic choices that align with the company’s vision and goals. While designing, ensure that your decision is not influenced by cognitive biases or emotions. Just because you’re craving pizza, doesn’t mean the website needs more Oregano.

Efficient team management

When a team is well managed, it can improve the quality of the output generated and create a positive work environment that fosters creativity and innovation for everyone. To define an output-driven team management structure, it is crucial to:

1. Improve team efficiency by delegating tasks to specialists within teams. This will help your team members focus more on their deliverables. By adopting this method, tasks will be completed by someone who is best suited to do it, hence producing a better output.
2. Improve productivity by defining each step of the design process in detail like setting clearer scopes for projects or goals. This will help establish better expectations from your team at every step.
3. Utilize project management tools and other technologies to streamline the design process & track the progress of tasks. Organize & automate as many things as you can. Work smarter, not harder.
4. Guide your junior colleagues and offer them opportunities for professional development to help them grow in their careers. They grow, you grow. Give constructive feedback to them and appreciate their efforts. Encourage them to set challenging goals and provide the necessary assistance to help them achieve success.

Clear communication & collaboration

An organization should foster a positive work environment with clear information flow across teams. Collaboration helps internal teams share ideas, resources, and best practices with each other. Teamwork increases efficiency and productivity. Here’s how to set up clear communication and collaboration structures:

1. Believe in open communication. Encourage team members to speak up and express their ideas, opinions, and concerns. Establish a culture where everyone feels comfortable sharing their thoughts. Honest communication is the foundation of a healthy team.
2. Regular sync-ups and retrospective meets are crucial. These meetings can help ensure everyone is up-to-date, discuss progress, address any issues or concerns, and helps plan future tasks.
3. Schedule periodic team meetings like knowledge sessions. Doing this will encourage team members to step out of their daily firefighting tasks and explore new ideas beyond the product roadmap. Innovation thrives on the willingness to learn and explore.
4. Improve cross-team communication & collaboration. Make sure all key team members, and stakeholders are reachable. Encourage your team to learn about other departments and roles.
5. Resolve all conflicts openly. Conflicts are inevitable in any team, but how they are resolved is key to the team’s success. You need to have processes in place to manage conflicts and reach mutually acceptable solutions.
6. Motivate your team. Teams with high motivation are more engaged, focused, and creative. Even a little bit of encouragement goes a long way.

Harmonic operations

Operations and processes

Streamlined design process

The design process is a systematic approach to solving a problem, but it can get quite complex in nature. Since there are so many moving parts that keep changing as per the project, it becomes quite hard to deliver solutions with the same efficiency every time. However, we can improve this by considering the following:

1. Mark all dependencies early-on in the projects. This will ensure that your design team is aligned with the technical aspects and the business objectives.
2. Define clear broken-down goals and requirements for every project. More details provide more clarity of task execution. Giving better estimations of efforts and timelines. A detailed plan ensures that you don’t accidentally build a rocket when all you need is a bicycle.
3. It’s important to involve stakeholders, such as product managers and developers, early-on in the design process. This will ensure that everyone is on the same page and that any potential roadblocks are identified early. Phew, less number of iterations.
4. Gather periodic feedback from other teams, and keep in touch with them to understand how their needs are evolving. Evolve your process accordingly.

Efficient daily task management and project goals

Each team member should be able to prioritize their work, manage their time effectively, take full ownership and keep a track of their progress. A task management tool, such as Trello or Asana, is extremely helpful in organizing tasks and tracking progress. To improve the efficiency of daily task management and project goals, consider the following:

1. Use previous sprint data to make accurate timeline estimates. If you don’t have data, start collecting it. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.
2. Mark dependencies and clear them out. Add blockers in project planning. This will make sure that the complete team has visibility. All teams would be kept informed about these dependiencies.
3. Manage all of your daily tasks and track them consistently. If something appears to be off track, raise a flag as soon as possible. It’s better to address potential issues before they become problems.
4. Understand the power of saying ‘no.’ Only take so many tasks as you can. Everyone likes to be ambitious, but at the same time it is important to understand that you are a part of complex machine that needs to keep on moving, if you break or stop, the complete machine would stop.
5. Reflect back on how the project or sprint went. Celebrate milestones. It’s important for the team to feel appreciated. If things didn’t go well, discuss. Every cloud has a silver lining.

Controlled experimentation

While it is important for us to experiment in this dynamic world, every experiment should be controlled. Things will pivot when you work at an agile startup. It’s the way it was meant to be. To achieve the desired outcomes, it’s essential to consider the following factors while planning and executing the experiment:

1. It’s important to define clear scopes & boundaries, you should know where to stop. This will help you determine when to start and stop the experiment. It also helps everyone to be kept in loop, and pitch-in if they need.
2. Just like it is important to reduce time-to-market for new features, it’s important to time your experiment. Remember, time is money.
3. Articulate the complete experiment by documenting the results and the process. This will help you refine and improve future experiments. A well documented experiment is like a good wine — it gets better with age, and you can savor the flavor later.

Regular tracking and reviews

Progress tracking: The team’s progress tracking is a crucial element to achieving project goals and deadlines. By monitoring the progress of potential issues, teams can take the necessary corrective measures to stay on track. Here are some ways to improve our progress tracking operations:

1. Schedule regular check-ins for project tracking. This helps everyone keep things in check,and raise flags early-on. It’s important to follow up on feedback and make sure action items are executed.
2. Post & communicate regular status updates of your projects to the team. This makes sure everyone is on the same page.
3. Periodically checking the priority of tasks on the roadmap is important to ensure that the team is working on the most important tasks at any given time.

Design Reviews: It is crucial for design teams to set up a review process. Consider the following to improve the design review operations:

1. Set up a detailed process and criteria for design reviews. Define stages to review the design in the design process.
2. Setup a design checklist to make sure everyone in the team goes through this list before sumbitting a design for review.
3. Understand and figure out the best medium to articulate your ideas and solutions.

Performance reviews: Regular performance reviews are a crucial aspect of operations in a startup. These reviews can help identify areas for improvement as well as provide team members with feedback on their performance. Improve the performance review operation by considering the following:

1. Make sure that every member of your team receives regular feedback, rather than just keeping a track of all formal performance reviews. This helps foster a better culture within the team.
2. Check for alignment of your team member and your company to make sure everyone is working towards the same goals and vision.
3. Use data & keep a track of their progress over time. This can help provide an objective evaluation of their progress and contributions to the company.

Where chaos and order collide, beauty is born.

Stay hungry, stay foolish

Being super organized should not be the goal. Chaos is as important as bringing order. Learn to understand the beauty of chaotic order. Explore! It is important to strike a balance between order and control.

In conclusion, it is crucial to find a balance between order and chaos instead of favoring one over the other. You should explore ways of integrating them more effectively into your own startup teams. Reflect and think about how order and chaos have impacted your work experiences, and identify one actionable step that you can take right away!

You’ve managed to stick around this long? Wow, I hope you learned something useful.

Clap, subscribe, and share! If you have any thoughts, comments, or even a bone to pick with me, don’t hesitate to drop a comment below!

Until next time!

-S :)