Team Leadership

Unifying the experience across siloed data systems via enterprise human-centered design

“We [use] so many systems…
The biggest problem is our systems don’t talk to each other.”

Summary and Impact

Government program analysts and managers had to navigate more than a dozen siloed, bespoke data systems to complete administrative tasks. The experience was uneven and onerous, taking precious time away from doing policy work.

As Design Lead, I co-managed a portfolio of enterprise initiatives to unify the user experience across 12 data products for 500+ government staff. In lockstep with the Product Lead, I led portfolio planning, scoping, team operations for a 10-personal cross-disciplinary team. My work laid the scaffolding for team members to create, maintain, and improve tools and standards that were used thousands of times in enterprise operations.

Major team achievements:

Garnered executive support to build a unified interface for all enterprise data systems
Promoted consistent web interactions and communication design with our Illustration Library and Design System
Reduced duplicative effort with our Human-Centered Design (HCD) Guidebook, which was a model for other agencies
Cultivated shared purpose across team silos through a dynamic, 100+ person HCD community of practice and an interactive Ecosystem Map

Below are sample tools our team created. I list my individual contributions in the sections that follow.

HCD Guidebook

Human-centered design Guidebook in Notion in blue

Illustration Library

Unified System Architecture Concept

Concept of a streamlined front end linking up to different back-end systems

Ecosystem Map

Credits to the talented team: Chris Oliver, Paul Weiss, Rebecca Bruno, Felix Gilbert, Sara Camnasio, Kit Miklik, Kevin Shaw, Nick Weinel, Bronwyn Clarke, Cierra Washington

My Contributions

Portfolio Strategy and Roadmapping

I worked with the team to frame our portfolio’s strategic goals and priority work streams based on discussions with executive sponsors, product teams, and contractors across the enterprise.

I also created visual roadmaps to demonstrate how our work streams aligned with business priorities, identify issues and risks we were monitoring, and justify how we allocated resources.

Strategic goals and visual roadmaps outlining business value, resourcing, and risks

Four focus areas: (1) Meeting user needs by reducing burden sustainably. (2) Strengthening trust between product teams and business partners, (3) Reducing duplicative effort, and (4) Better integrating HCD within agile development

Priority recommendations

Summary of recommendations, titled "shaping the future of enterprise HCD at CMCS in DSG"

Outline with proposed goals and tasks, aligned to the skills and people needed to deliver on them

Framework for defining opportunities and priorities, and communicating our strategic decisions

Team Building and Planning

Some of the ways I fostered a supportive and effective team:

Planned storytelling sessions to celebrate the impact of the team’s work
Facilitated team alignment workshops to create clarity around our goals.
Hosted deliverable reviews to provide internal feedback ahead of client meetings.
Ran bi-weekly retrospectives to iteratively approve our approach, shout-out teammates, and share internet memes

Visioning activities

Visioning activity entitled, Aspirational Headlines from the Future. The ideas are listed as new stories in a fake Washington Post front page. Staff voted on what resonated with them as a warm up.

“Gallery of Wins” showcasing team successes

Showcase of team projects, their use case, and the impact, including quotes and feedback from users

Sprint planning and review board

Figjam board of biweekly sprint planning, aligned to each workstream outlined in our roadmap. There was also a warmup and check-in at each planning session.

Program Wrap Party, inviting back three years of team alumni

Lessons

Standards are most effective when the guidelines are embedded into staff onboarding as well as ongoing operations and maintenance workflows.
Executive championship—such as setting an enterprise-wide adoption deadline—can help individual teams prioritize implementing new standards and practices.