New Product Development Process

Background

Scrum teams had gone through agile training but still estimating timelines without problem framing nor including design.

Problem

Two major projects missed deadlines by months due to underestimated engineering effort.

My Role

Investigator, Facilitator, Creator, and Evangelist

Solution

• Interviewed team members across three scrums to identify gaps and pain points

• Partnered with the Director of Product and Engineering Leads to co-create a solution

• Championed early design involvement in project planning

• Designed clear, shareable visuals to communicate the new process

• Helped train functional team members to adopt new ways of working

Outcome

• A functional, inclusive planning process with defined phases, clear deliverables, and aligned roles and responsibilities

• Sparked the formation of the Product–Engineering–UX triad model

• Applied this approach on the Unified Help project, resulting in a Distinction Award.

• Process adopted by three orgs within a quarter and remained core to how we worked for years

• Refreshed later to include Data Science and Content Strategy as core partners