Design & Product Ops
Linktree Product Process
Year
2023
My role
Design Lead
The team
1 CPO
1 Engineering Manager
1 Product Manager
In 2023 the Linktree product org was scaling significantly, from ~70 to ~270 people in a year. However, it's processes and ways-of-working weren't keeping up with the scale and increase in size of the team. This lead to a number of challenges for product teams, including no consistency and cohesion in how teams approached product development, as well as misalignment and confusion throughout the process.There was a need to set some structure and guidance for the teams in terms of how we approached product, while still maintaining enough flexibility to account for different project types and team dynamics and avoiding the dreaded 'process for process' sake.
The approach
Initially there wasn't appetite from the business to introduce a Product Process at that stage, so I started within my sphere of influence, the design team. Initially my focus was on creating a shared Design Framework with the goal of firstly establishing common terminology for our product development phases as well as clear design rituals and artefacts for each phase. The designers could start to share and implement these in there day-to-day squad work.
Following the success of our initial design framework the wider product org wanted to adapt and iterate on this process to roll it out to all squads and all roles. I worked with Product Managers and Engineering Managers to refine and rollout this process to the wider org.
The goals of establishing this process included: 1. Being more customer obsesseded, 2. Streamline & simplify our process & rituals, 3. Focus on hypothesis and impact
led product development, 4. Optimise for speed of learning
The process — Discover
I first started with a series of cross-functional workshops with engineers, designers and product managers to understand how they were currently approaching building features within their teams. The aim was to not only understand what was working well VS not well, but also understand how we could build flexibility into the process to accomodate for different types of projects (experiements VS new features VS large multi-month projects) and team ways of working.
Key findings included; The majority of confusion arose during inception of a project where there was confusion and misalignment within teams on the goal and problem to be solved. Additionally a number of people mentioned having no shared artefacts to help with alignment agreement. Lastly, the lack of shared terminology and approach lead to confusion and therefor slower product development in general.
The process — Refinement
The first version of our product process was well received throughout the product org, with feedback from designers and product managers that it lead to increased alignment throughout their teams especially during the discovery phase. However, although there was clarity for design on how our practices and rituals fit within the process, engineering and product management still desired further clarity.
I collaborated closely the CPO at the time, as well as another Product Manager and Engineering manager to begin refining the process, terminology and definitions to ensure it was fit-for-purpose for the entire product org. We also mapped out across each discipline the activities and rituals that were to take place at each phase.
The process — Deliver
We then delivered the updated process to the org via a series of presentations at our All Hands as well as providing supporting Notion pages and visual artefacts to aid comprehension understanding. The final arefact included info on the high level process, how our rituals and artefacts mapped to this, as well as details on what was expected from each discipline at each phase.
Final results
The process was well received throughout the org, where post launch we conducted a series of retros to understand what was working well VS what could be iterated and improved. The majority of squads mentioned feeling more aligned and clear on what what the goals of each project were and what success looks like. Additionally they mentioned it felt like clearer alignment on the problem space and project goals upfront enabled them to move more quickly throughout the other phases of the product process.
1. Retro results were inline with our initial goals of increased alignment between teams, reducing time and effort and creating greater autonomy and empowerment.
2. We reduced time signal i.e. the median time it takes an Idea to get from the "Understand phase to the Measure phase."
3. During our quarterly engagement survey there was a 20% improvement in the result of "I have the right tools, processes and frameworks to do my job successfully."
Next Project
Linktree Navigation
