Overview

How might we…streamline the process to ensure teams don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time they kickoff to build and ship a new product?

Problem

Companies squander time, money, and effort into building globally distributed teams made up of dozens to hundreds of engineers and designers to complete operational level tasks quickly and inexpensively. But with current economic conditions, the emergence of GenAI, and the impacts of Covid, teams are shrinking and need to work smart, not hard in order to meet the needs of businesses.

Target users

Our initial task was to identify how to demonstrate the value of our solution to both users and buyers. We discovered that agencies represented the perfect balance between the needs of their staff and what they could afford to pay for. Agencies often have tight budgets but high demands for efficiency and effectiveness, making them ideal candidates for our product.

Personal connection

Attending the Product World Forum in Brooklyn, NY with fellow EY colleagues to hear chief product officers from Marvel, Verizon, and more discuss their software development strategies.

During my time as Product Design Lead with the Client Technology Group at EY, working with globally distributed teams was the norm. This experience profoundly shaped my understanding of the challenges and opportunities associated with remote and international collaboration. Coordinating with team members across the globe presented unique challenges and provided valuable insights into effective remote teamwork.

The path to a minimum viable product

Our goal was to create a solution that met the practical needs of these agencies while providing a clear return on investment. We prioritized features that offered significant impact with minimal complexity, ensuring our MVP was effective and financially accessible. By maintaining close communication with potential users and stakeholders, we continuously refined our approach to align with real-world requirements, delivering a product that resonated with our target audience.

Assembling the team

(Top to bottom) Brandon Tsang — Development @ Montreal, Quebec | Adil Gurbanov — Architecture @ Utrecht, Netherlands | Obafemi Ogunmokun — Engineering @ Lagos, Nigeria | Matthew Voshell — Design @ Seattle, WA

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, bringing together a skilled and diverse team became a critical priority. To achieve this, I leveraged LinkedIn to tap into a broad network of professionals and utilized collaborative platforms like Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and Azure DevOps to facilitate communication and team bonding. This multi-platform approach allowed us to connect with talented individuals from various time zones and regions, bringing together a wealth of perspectives and expertise.

What we heard from the market

“It begins and ends with telling a story. I’ve definitely noticed a difference in the user experience of products between the teams that build story maps driven by user research and those that don’t.

The quality isn’t as high and it often takes twice as long.”

— Product Leader @ Design Agency

User story map

Each epic, feature, and user story was meticulously crafted to capture not only the functional requirements but also the user experience nuances crucial for a seamless interaction. By prioritizing user stories based on their importance and dependency, we ensure a focused development approach that aligns with our overarching product vision.

Onboarding

Covers essential tasks such as creating an account with platforms like Apple iCloud, Google, and Microsoft. It also includes reviewing legal terms, choosing a subscription plan (Basic, Pro, Enterprise), setting up the workspace with product details, and inviting team members. These steps ensure a smooth start for new users, providing them with all necessary information and settings to begin their journey with SprintZero.

Workspace

Focuses on core functionalities crucial for project management. This includes the Home screen featuring a story map, strategy and tactics planning (covering aspects like ethics, vision, and objectives), operations management (including calendar, huddle, and performance tracking), and userbase features such as personas, accessibility, and insights. These components collectively ensure effective project execution and team collaboration.

Global

Encompasses broader elements such as workspace navigation, product management, account settings, and additional features like search and messaging. This epic ensures that all overarching functionalities are in place, allowing users to navigate the platform efficiently, manage their accounts, and utilize communication tools effectively.

OpenAI unveils ChatGPT

From 2018 until November 30, 2022, I had always planned to utilize machine learning in some capacity. However, based on my previous experiences, I knew it would require a completely separate effort. Then, OpenAI debuted ChatGPT and unleashed large language models (LLMs) on the world.

Immediate impact

This capability enabled us to implement features we had never dreamed of before. The efficiency and affordability allowed us to explore advanced functionalities and innovative solutions that were previously out of reach. It opened up new possibilities for creativity and productivity, fundamentally transforming our development process and pushing the boundaries of what we could achieve.

Personalizing LLMs

Robin Williams, one of my favorite comedians, immortalized his role in Disney's "Aladdin" for very good reason. Inspired by his portrayal of the Genie, I decided to give our API a name: ScrumGenie. This personalization added a touch of whimsy and familiarity, making the tool even more engaging and memorable for our team.

Visual Design

Each mock-up encapsulates the essence of our user-centric approach, meticulously tailored to streamline workflows, foster collaboration, and drive productivity.

Home

The Home screen serves as the central hub for SprintZero, featuring a dynamic user story map that visualizes the project workflow. This map allows teams to prioritize tasks, track progress, and manage releases effectively.

Strategy ➜ Vision

The Vision screen provides a structured approach to defining the product's long-term goals and purpose. This screen guides teams through creating a concise product vision statement by breaking the process into three steps: Value Proposition, Features, and Statement.

Tactics ➜ Roadmap

The Roadmap screen provides a strategic visualization of the project timeline using a "Now, Next, Later" model. This structured approach helps teams prioritize and sequence their work effectively, establishing realistic expectations for the sequence in which epics and tasks will be addressed.

Operations ➜ Huddle

The Huddle board is designed for daily stand-ups and team meetings, fostering better communication and collaboration. It supports a structured format for daily updates, detailing what was done yesterday, plans for today, and any blockers. This ensures all team members are aligned and aware of the current project status.

Userbase ➜ Participants

The Participants section is a comprehensive tool for managing user interactions and storing interview artifacts. It tracks all participant interactions from initial contact to follow-up interviews, ensuring that user research data is organized and easily accessible.

Userbase ➜ Practice

The Practice area leverages AI to enhance UX professionals' user interviewing skills by providing a simulated environment for conducting interviews and receiving feedback. It offers realistic scenarios covering various roles and situations, enabling users to practice and improve their techniques.

Delivery architecture

Leveraged Google Cloud Platform (GCP) for the build pipeline, integrating seamlessly with Stripe and OpenAI APIs. This approach ensured efficient handling of diverse workloads, scalability, and reliability throughout the development process, ultimately providing a frictionless login experience and enhancing data security.

Live demos

This project was a valuable learning experience for me as a UX designer. I learned how to apply the user research and design methods in a real-world context.

Dynamic user story map

The video demonstrates the dynamic user story map feature. It starts with a blank story map, showing how easily you can prioritize by dragging and dropping epics and their associated stories left to right, or reorder features within an epic by moving them up and down.

Pillar walkthrough > strategy

The video cover the Strategy pillar. It starts with the home page user story map and then covers three key areas. Accessibility is presented as a checklist to ensure compliance with standards like WCAG, allowing users to track and mark off various aspects. The Kickoff section helps define personas, business outcomes, potential risks, problem statements, and market leaders, creating detailed instances within the user base persona section.

Onboarding

The video demonstrates the onboarding process. It starts with logging in using a Google account, naming the product "Sprint Zero," and selecting "web" as the product type. Adding team members' emails can be done later in the settings section.

Managing release

The video demonstrates how to manage releases. On the right-hand side of the user story map, you can see the initial base release version 1.0.0. Adding a new release involves following proper semantic versioning. For instance, you can add a small release by incrementing the version to 1.0.1 or create a major release with version 2.0.0. After adding the release, you can easily switch between them to manage and organize your project versions.