Designers and Engineers, collaborate early and often

Articles around product processes and how smooth they run can be kind of cookie cutter, but the reality of working within a product team can be a rocky road. At Qstream we build a product that makes sales teams better. Recently, we launched Video Coaching, a feature where sales reps can sharpen their skills by responding to bite sized video challenges delivered regularly to their phone. Managers can then give feedback coaching insights based on the video responses.

Click here to watch our introductory video to Video Coaching

One of the reasons our release was successful (especially given our tight deadline to demo at a conference) was how close product+design and engineering worked together. Before, things were a lot looser given our smaller team size and lack of formal design process. Having said that, our approach did undergo some flux as we had some growing pains to contend with — Onboarding new hires, especially our design function, and introducing new processes. We were feeling some of these issues out as we went.

Increase product knowledge >> Improved knowledge delivery >> Targeted coaching & feedback >> Real world sales results

Collaborate early and often

The engineering team at Qstream are full of creative ideas and have a deeper understanding of the limitations and capabilities of the underlying technology we use. So including them as early as possible in the design process was essential. And not just engineers; At most startups everybody is so close to the product that we’re all involved in the creative process, whether by choice or not. Collaborate early and often to:

• Generate ideas and understand constraints to confirm ideas will work
• Communicate primary flows and goals, and confirm what’s in and out of scope
• Avoid engineers feeling disengaged because they’re just handed something to build and not involved in how the solution came to be
• Reduce the risk of flawed ideas and people suggesting new ideas too late because they weren’t involved earlier in the design process

New ideas too late in the process freaking designers out

Look under the hood

We shared prototypes early and often to gather ideas, keep everybody in the loop and prevent any grand reveal. Yet it wasn’t until the story was about to kick off that engineering raised the approach wasn’t feasible. Why?

• Like many other companies, we have a legacy code base which can prove tricky in terms of fully understanding the tech stack and the implementation effort. This meant that some design elements that appeared trivial in our wireframes were actually quite complex from a build perspective.
• And because of this, different areas of the product use different technologies and thus have different limitations, what works for one might be broken for another. So we sometimes only discover issues after looking under the hood.

Early design deemed infeasible. This was caught early. Phew!

Tech Tasks deliver value

Code-aside, an earlier step was needed in our process to discuss possible solutions, and for engineers to be allocated time to investigate designs from a tech standpoint. We call these Tech Tasks. Although they don’t deliver direct value to the customer they do bring visibility into all technical work necessary — Another goal of these tech tasks was to enable faster delivery of planned business value stories without a risk of introducing unnecessary technical oversight.

• These sessions focused on early analysis and help confirm how achievable designs are given effort, resources, timelines, etc. Here you may need to tweak your design or know what split method makes sense. This helps when story grooming where you want to make a story ready for the backlog and make sure it’s not bigger than 2–4 days.
• As well as investigating feasibility, engineers may discover new ways to approach the problem based on their findings, or how other teams tackled similar stories. Cheers Medium Engineering ;)

Two sides of the same coin

Communication and collaboration between product, design and engineering has increased dramatically compared to previous projects. And we continue the conversation regularly at standups and retrospectives.

Designers and engineers are both creatives, two sides of the same coin, each building with their own set of skills and tools. We have a mutual respect for each other’s craft, have healthy arguments and leave our egos at the door. We believe reducing the divide between the two forms stronger alliances and stronger products. What are your tips on building creative relationships between design and engineering?

Cheers to those who read through and gave feedback, especially Agata Cieslinska and Keith Tormey. How Video Coaching works diagram by Ål Power.