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Collaboration Flows in Product Development

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Friday, June 9, 2017 • Enterprise Experience 2017
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Collaboration Flows in Product Development
Speakers: Mark Interrante
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Summary

Mark Interrante, the SVP of Engineering at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, has an extensive history of building out design and product teams in technology. Listen as he shares tips and tools to improve collaboration between multi-disciplinary teams.

Key Insights

  • Organizational silos often manifest visibly in product design, reflecting internal boundaries rather than customer needs.

  • Bringing in external UX experts like Jakob Nielsen can reveal uncomfortable truths about organizational alignment.

  • Assuming positive intent when working across teams dramatically improves collaboration and conflict resolution.

  • Mapping horizontal workflows across teams helps identify bottlenecks, usually caused by delays and waiting time rather than workload.

  • Writing the fences — explicitly defining cross-team boundaries and interaction protocols — increases trust and collaboration between departments.

  • Small, incremental changes in team habits compound to transform culture much more effectively than large sweeping reforms.

  • Clarifying the deeper goals behind tasks using four simple outcome questions prevents wasted effort and uncovers better solutions.

  • A concise proposal framework (side-pav) that states situation, complication, position, action, and benefit dramatically increases approval rates for change initiatives.

  • Large organizations benefit from treating teams as having APIs—clear, documented interfaces for interaction and requests.

  • Focusing on optimizing workflow latency delivers far greater productivity returns than increasing work hours or additional headcount.

Notable Quotes

"You can see our organization through the homepage of our site — we each owned a rectangle."

"Culture is what you tolerate — if you tolerate rudeness or tardiness, it becomes part of who you are."

"Assume positive intent from their point of view — they’re trying to have a good day, not work against you."

"Up to 90% of time in work streams is delay or waiting time, not active work."

"If you want to get faster output, optimize the work and workflow first — not add more hours."

"We started to build an API for how other teams could interact with us like a contract."

"Use four simple questions to find out what people really want and why — it avoids misaligned efforts."

"Side-pav proposals answer what’s going on, why it matters now, what you propose, what action to take, and what benefit comes from it."

"Small micro changes every week add up — ask your team what tiny improvements they’ve made recently."

"Making issues visible, sharing models, and iterating versions of workflows helps uncover blockages and solutions."

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