Summary
The IBM CIO portfolio is comprised of thousands of tools and services. Given the organization’s obsession with the IBMer experience and their desire to positively impact IBMer productivity, it is extremely important that they allocate their scarce Design & Research talent to the projects that have the greatest impact on IBMers' work experience. To this end, they have refined their staffing processes and developed a new metric, The Design Staffing Score, that allows them to measure the degree to which their staffing approach aligns with project priority. Patrick will describe their refined approach to staffing, how progress is measured, and the tangible benefits they’ve realized.
Key Insights
-
•
A simple prioritize/reject staffing model without documented criteria leads to confusion and inefficiency.
-
•
Focusing priority on two quantifiable variables—number of users and frequency of use—provides an objective basis for staffing decisions.
-
•
Leadership support from the CIO, Fletcher Breven, was critical to prioritizing employee experience and UX impact.
-
•
Using domain-specific design advisors helps define ideal staffing per project and aligns staffing to project needs.
-
•
A transparent queue with published priority scores and staffing expectations improves stakeholder communication and reduces uncertainty.
-
•
Introducing tiers of support allows low priority projects to receive appropriate (though limited) assistance without full designer embedding.
-
•
Creating a design staffing score metric measuring correlation between priority and staffing enables tracking impact and improvement.
-
•
Weekly automation of staffing data collection and score calculation helps maintain alignment and enables rapid adjustments.
-
•
Collaboration across domains through weekly meetings and focal points reduces duplication and promotes sharing of research and design knowledge.
-
•
Continuous communication, feedback loops, and leadership involvement are essential for evolving prioritization and staffing strategies.
Notable Quotes
"If you’re like us, your team simply isn’t large enough to fully staff every project with 100% of the UX talent it needs."
"We created a simple formula focused on how many people a project impacts and how often they use it."
"Our chief information officer Fletcher Breven has always seen his role as providing a productive environment for IBMers—it’s our North Star."
"We went from an approve/reject model to a transparent prioritized queue where nothing is rejected, only priorities confirmed or adjusted."
"We transitioned designers embedded on low priority projects to higher priority ones within three weeks."
"We created tiers of support where the gold standard, embedding designers, is reserved for priority one through three projects."
"We measure alignment with a design staffing score reflecting the correlation between project priority and percent staffed."
"We automated our staffing records and updated our staffing score weekly, watching it grow from 44 to nearly 80."
"Design advisors maintain relationships with designers and project teams to reassess staffing needs as project scope changes."
"Communicating frequently and transparently with stakeholders about priorities and staffing builds trust and understanding."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Using skittles to map skills made it less personal but more fun and engaging for designers."
Shaping design, designers and teams
November 8, 2018
"Design needs to be aligned first; if design cannot agree amongst itself, how can the bigger organisation understand it."
Sabrina Mach Nina WainwrightHow to Design Your Design Operating Model
September 29, 2021
"Complexity is not a barrier to accessibility – even the most complicated games have been made accessible."
Samuel ProulxInvisible barriers: Why accessible service design can’t be an afterthought
December 3, 2024
"Nothing about us without us is the mantra we are embracing when doing our inclusive design operations."
Saara Kamppari-MillerDesignOps for Inclusive Design and Accessibility (Videoconference)
May 26, 2022
"Michael became our farmer maintaining a steady flow of the team; Dana was our gardener cultivating quality work."
Briana ThomasThe Quiet Force: Uncovering Hidden Leadership in High-Impact Design Teams
September 24, 2024
"The hardest part about remote is making design reviews feel collaborative and team-based."
Adam Cutler Karen Pascoe Ian Swinson Susan WorthmanDiscussion
June 8, 2016
"We had no idea where we were going, so we had to build and connect with teams like we’d never had before."
Operationalizing DesignOps
November 7, 2018
"Executives see research value when they’ve lost money on bad bets and want to mitigate risk for future decisions."
Leah Buley Joe NatoliAsk Me Anything with Leah Buley and Joe Natoli, co-authors of The User Experience Team of One (2nd edition)
October 8, 2024
"Strategy should be continuous, circular, and evolve with every action the organization takes."
Nathan ShedroffDouble Your Mileage: Use Your Research Strategically
March 31, 2020