Different teams for different work
Every cross-functional team should have the skills it needs to complete the work. That’s important for achieving a fast flow rate of work because the team doesn’t have to wait on contributions from outside.
Every team, to have a complete skill set that means it doesn’t have to go outside itself, needs all of the roles that make up a cross-functional team. That might include product, delivery, content, design, development, testing, etc.
The problem with every team being the same is that work is never the same.
Some work might require design but not content. Other work might require lots of development but not so much design.
Perhaps the solution is to have different team templates, still cross-functional, but with predefined focus on certain types of work.
One team could have the skills to do more new product development work, another be skilled in optimising existing products, and another particularly good at customer service or payment capabilities.
These teams shouldn’t be set up to be ‘the payments team’, for example, they should just have the skills that enable them to do that kind of work well.
What does it mean to be user-centred?
Google, “Define user-centred” and almost all of the results will be about user-centred design. But for an organisation to be truly user-centred, user-centredness can’t be only about design. User-centredness must run deeper.
There are multiple lists of principles for user-centredness, and many are designed focus, but here are a few that seem like they could extend beyond design.
- Understand users – including the context of use and user needs.
- Make interaction easy – however users interact with an organisation, be consistent, solve problems so users don’t have to.
- Create a dialogue – frequent involvement of users, taking feedback onboard.
- Change over time – keep pace with users and their changing needs.
What if we started from nothing
What if you started work tomorrow morning with no outcomes or goals, no design process or project plan, and was told, “Do some good”.
Where would you start? What would you do?
With complete freedom to start from scratch you could be open minded, pick any problem to solve, any goal to achieve, design a completely new way of working, create something free from the constraints of existing mindsets.
What would I do..?