Description

Leading the digital design arm of the kingfisher group. Responsible for the advancement of the digital offering for B&Q, Castorama, Screwfix and Brico Depot.

My journey at Kingfisher started in November 2018 when I was headhunted by a boss from a previous role asking if I was free to assist him in rebuilding the digital design team at group level for kingfisher.

Team Assessment (25.11.18)

The 25 strong digital design team at Kingfisher was made up primarily of staff from multiple design agencies that sat in house and worked as if they are permanent staff. These designers were spread across the office and integrated into separate scrum teams that all work on separate parts of the same digital offering. The communication between the designers was almost none existent and their work load and design direction was given to them by the product owner sitting with in each team.

The design hardware and software was already consistent across the Kingfisher group, however the design files were stored locally on each designers computer.

All senior positions with in the design team were filled by agency staff and there was no clear career progression routes for internal members of the team.

The primary focus for each team was to create tools that compliment the core e-commerce offering that do not directly effect the main sales journeys. Design had no influence over the future digital vision for the group and did not contribute to the backlog.

Breakdown

• No team communication or file sharing.

• Un balanced contractor presence.

• Little or no internal career guidance.

• No design voice to influence the company roadmap.

My approach

Step 1

• Have 1 on 1 sessions with all members on the team, to enable myself to assess where I should focus my attention first.

• Remove agency members from key responsibilities with in the team.

• Provide a framework with in which the full team can collaborate and increase consistency.

Step 2

• Pull all team members from each of the individual product teams and get them all sitting together, to allow them to have visibility of all design content being produced across the business.

• Generate a single design backlog and set up priority sessions with all current product owners present. This enabled the full design team to service all projects in flight, increasing efficency by 72%. (Tracked in Jira)

• Use new efficiency to further remove agency presence and back fill any necessary roles with internal designers.

Step 3

• Provide a method of communicating transparency to the rest of the company around the design teams responsibilities, progress and output.

• Asses the new design backlog against the company goals and backlog. Adjust to ensure that design is able to deliver while continuing to innovate.

• Create specialist lead roles to surround myself with a management team that will ensure that all crafts are being prioritised correctly. (UX, UI, Research, Physical product)

• Generate a sign-off process that allowed me to have complete confidence in the quality level of the work being released.

Step 4

• Improve communication and collaboration with other teams with in the company.

• Set up training and learning opportunities for the team.

• Organise and run social events, to ensure that the team’s morale is high and that they are given the opportunity to have a voice with in the company.

Responsible for (After team realignment)

The team

• Mentorship and guidance design team.

• Lead the team’s personal development plans.

• Growing or reducing team size based on business needs.

• Instil a strong sense of team culture and community.

• Prioritisation of time and delegating effectively to ensure skills are applied to best serve the needs of the team and company.

The craft

• Evaluating internal processes and ways of working and proactively putting measures in place to ensure the design team and key stakeholders are working as efficiently and effectively as possible.

• Defining our design guidelines, pushing the boundaries, and ensuring our design footprint reflects our values and are unarguably unique.

• Tooling evaluation and updates based on industry trends v cost to the business.

• Use data generation tools and analytics to improve the companies products.

Collaboration

• Working closely with our marketing, customer success, product, and development teams to refine and refocus our digital presence and journeys into frictionless experiences.

• Helping Product to define the company’s roadmap and design backlog.

• Cascading key UX intel throughout the organisation to ensure all departments have awareness and opportunities are ultimately actioned.

• Support client leadership to deliver agreed business plans through supporting new business opportunities and targeted upsells to existing clients

• Support business development by building business cases, proposals and presentations to secure client investment.