Instilling Professional Practices

Product teams expect members of a UX Design Group to possess world-class UX skills. They must also possess business, teamwork, technical, communication, and advocacy skills. UX teams should never assume they are entitled to a voice in product design (even if UX has solid governance). We need to ensure product teams would choose to work with us, even if they did not need to.

Leaders should work with their teams to define role and competency grids to explicitly define these skills.

To facilitate a transformation and internalize these practices, a UX leader may need to provide training. In one case, I hired external companies to teach business essentials, presentation skills, teamwork, crucial conversations, accountability, and influencing.

Professional practices means setting clear expectations on all engagements. when my team and I created an internal design firm (and delivered $100's of Millions of dollars in value), we created UX Project Briefs, which defined:

• statement of value
• challenges and solution
• project objectives
• project plan and schedule
• resources
• deliverables
• assumptions and risks