Managing Design Scope and Team Expectations
By Cindy Lu, Ph.D., CHPFPublished - 29 June 2009
Sometimes you receive requirements from other teams for specific features to add to an existing system. You only have a few days to deliver the design. You analyze the requirements, start the design immediately, complete the design and deliver it to the team. The team comes back with questions and additional features. You revise the design and review it with the team again. More features are requested. Now the project is stretched to 3 weeks.
Sometimes, we receive a scope of work for a new system with only a high-level design description or with a specific solution suggested by a stakeholder. Once you have started the design, the scope is increased.
- Does this sound familiar?
- What do you usually do?
- How can you quickly understand what to design?
- How can you estimate the time effort?
- How do you manage possible scope creep and team expectations?
This article will share a successful strategy for managing design scope and managing team expectations.
1. Understand the Problem
Very often the requirements communicated verbally or in written form contain a mix of problems and proposed solutions. It is important to understand the problem to be solved first before reviewing the proposed solutions.
For example, a requirement says: Add a check box by folders for the user to exclude folders for uploading to the server.
Here, adding a check is a suggested solution. Enabling the user to exclude folders for uploading to the server is the problem.
To help understand what you are designing, ask:
- Who are the users?
- What is the problem we will help them to solve?
- What does the user do now?
- What difference will it make after the solution is implemented?
2. Write User Scenarios
Once you understand the problem, extract the information from the requirement and write a user scenario.
For example, the user scenario for this feature can be written as:
The user wants to exclude some folders when uploading other folders to the server.
It is important that the user scenario contains the following elements:
- The user (who)
- The task (what the user is trying to do)
- The end goal (the result after completing the task)
3. Define User Requirements
How do you know if your design solution is successful?
In this example, think about the following criteria:
- The excluding function has to be intuitive and easy to find
- The user must be able to see which folders have been excluded
- The interaction style must be consistent with the existing system
4. Bring Everyone on the Same Page
It is important to bring everyone on the same page to review the problems to be solved and the success criteria. You can do this via a phone call or face-to-face meeting. We also use a wiki to share and communicate information. It is important to do this before discussing the design solution. This will be your design scope. Once everyone agreed the design scope, you can estimate the time effort based on the above information.
5. Design the Flow and Details
There are usually two types of design tasks: Screen flows for navigation and screen details. Often I find junior designers focus too much on the screen details and forgot how the screen will fit into the whole picture or framework. It’s important to link all the screens together (screen flows) to see how the user will travel through the screens to complete a task. The screen flows enable you to:
- Identify how the user will get there
- Identify how many steps the user will take to complete the entire task
- Make sure the designs are consistent in interaction styles and
- Ensure the user does not get lost during the task flow
6. Conduct Design Reviews
Developers and business people are all very smart and would like to contribute ideas. Open your mind to their ideas and criticism. However keep in mind the user scenarios and success criteria you agreed on before hand to keep everyone on the same page. When a new idea is added which may result in new features, inform the team and make a note about the extra effort you will need to make to complete the project.
7. Perform Usability Testing
If you conduct a usability test with the new features you designed, keep in mind about the user scenarios and success criteria. Problems found from usability testing may add or change the user scenarios that will add increased scope. Make the notes and keep the team informed.
In summary, defining user scenarios and success criteria will enable you to better manage the design scope and team’s expectations. You don’t need to spend a lot of time to write a long document. For a request with 4-5 user scenarios, you should be able to complete the scope definition and time estimate within 2-3 hours. Remember to involve your customers, the business and product teams during the process.