What’s this document?
This is as a framework for categorizing our tasks. Hopefully, it should make it easier to reflect on your past projects and better prioritize your future ones. Each bucket comes with an ideal process, level of engagement and type of communication.
My team includes Graphic Design, Research, and Product Design and therefore everything that is written here is related to all of them. I will refer to all of them as Design.
Why do I need to read it?
As designers and researchers, it’s tempting for us to just do what we’re asked to do. But those tasks aren’t always the best place for us to prioritize our time and effort. We should always think: ‘is there something more useful I should do now?’ – including coming up with our own projects.
All of these buckets – even the lowest-priority ones – should include space for reflection, though: time to prepare at the start, evaluate as you go and reflect at the end.
So what are the buckets?
- Urgent – just do it – well.
- Support – plan, and execute with full attention.
- Lead – own the project and use others to take it from zero to one.
- Self serve – help others do a great job.
- Overlook – empower others to take full responsibility.
- Wrong to do – don’t do it, and flag if others do.
Finding the right bucket
To be able to decide where your projects and tasks land, it might be useful to ask yourself:
- Who’s the best person to do this? What kind of support will they need?
- How can a growth mindset help make this project scalable and repeatable?
- What happens if it doesn’t get done (impact, effects, risks)?
- What role do I need and want to take in this project?
#1: Urgent
Planned or unplanned, these are the jobs we have to do swiftly – to the highest standard possible.
It’s normally something that has a big impact on an important metric we track, or something with a reputational risk (company or personal).
Before you start:
Either we have an amazing opportunity or something went wrong. Find out what and why.
As you go:
Do it now, do it well. Talk to anyone you need continuously and chase people furiously to execute this properly.
When you’re finished:
Summarise the project, and get feedback – is the urgency over? Was the result good?
Do a retro if needed.
#2: Support
Roadmap, prioritize, plan and execute with precision.
These are strategic projects done by agencies, freelancers or our in-house team. Normally they’re big impact and well thought out.
Before you start:
Preparation is key. These projects cost a lot of time and money, so they need to be successful and measurable.
Set a deadline (and agree on it with the team). Make sure any risks or delays are highlighted in the brief and decide who’s accountable for mitigating each of them.
As you go:
Meet once a week with the team, project owner or involved stakeholders. Meet at least once every two weeks with the direct manager. And at least once a month, update the boss’ boss (or even the rest of the company).
Actively ask for feedback, and communicate delays as they happen. If something looks wrong, help your team refocus, revisit the brief – help them keep their eyes on the ball.
Be flexible enough to change if you need to, but document why and what the impact is.
When you’re finished:
Make sure you have a retro and get a feedback form to make sure we delivered a valuable service.
#3: Lead
Projects that drive business impact: something that’s uniquely in the design and research team’s skill set.
Only we can (or should) do these projects, so we should lead them. They have a high impact either on business or culture, and sometimes your manager will have asked you to take care of it. Even if you’re a manager yourself, sometimes you’re the best person for the job: you should know which projects these are and own them.
Before you start:
- keep a backlog of projects like this
We won’t be able to prioritize all of them, but we should record them. If none of them ever happen, we know something’s going wrong: these are the projects that are best for self-improvement even though their impact is much more than that. If you’re stuck in a rut, you’ll stop doing your best work, so a project like this can lift you out. - get inspired
How do others do this sort of work? Use that to guide your planning; these tasks call for fresh thinking. - spot your sponsor
These projects might not have a business stakeholder, but they will have a sponsor: someone who sees the importance of the project and gives you time to do it. They’d also like to see results, like in any project.
As you go:
Communicate clearly when anything changes: other people in your team are also investing their time and effort in this. And keep getting feedback as you go: these projects tend to get less scrutiny because they’re done by like-minded folks, so challenge yourself: put it somewhere public for opinions, ask for comments.
Remember to keep checking in with your sponsor and support team: often, these people won’t be in your function. Celebrate incremental goals with them – important projects can sometimes take forever. And be nice to whoever helps you! They don’t have to.
When you’re finished:
- Measure what you achieved
- Get feedback to find how clear the process and goals were
- Make sure everyone knows it’s finished and you’re now shifting priority
- Put the work somewhere it’s easily accessible to empower other people.
#4: Self serve
Help people achieve their goals on their own.
These are projects you can (and want) to teach someone else to do. They’ll work better in scale if more people can do them, and the impact is lower if something goes wrong.
You need to give support at the beginning, middle and end. Forgetting one of those will lead to bad results, lack of self awareness (if it’s good or not) and misinformation (because these things will be shared with others).
Before you start:
Find out:
- if a thing you do can work better at scale, if others do it
- if it’s risky for others to do it
- whether you can create templates or explainers to empower others to do it.
Then set some expectations: explain exactly what you’ll do and how you’ll help. Often designers and researchers get landed with admin or production for these sorts of projects – that’s really because we can ask the right questions.
Try not to get landed with the admin or production for these projects. It’s time-consuming and not a design skillset even though we know how to ask the right questions. Depending on the job, that’s where Design Ops comes in handy.
As you go:
- train people in skills, not tasks
When we’re helping people self serve, we should aim to give them professional skills: for example, writing a research brief. So yes, we can train them, but they could also use books, courses, and freelance trainers, then come back to us for feedback on their new-found talent.
Sometimes they’ll be iwoca-specific skills, in which case, they’ll hopefully have all the right context already (or can ask their manager).
- support, don’t shame
We should be supportive with training and feedback we give. If someone’s trying something they don’t usually do, we should give them private feedback first (not public). If they’re someone with a designer in their build team, we should get that designer’s help giving feedback.
Criticizing someone in the wrong way just means they’ll end up avoiding you, hating you or complaining about you – not learning.
- third party projects count, too
In these projects, we need to act as advisors and not waste too much time on it. At the same time, we should expect to be involved all across if we are even remotely accountable. Get involved early: we don’t want to feel like a rubber stamp.
When you’re finished:
Rank people’s skills and their development in self serving for the respected function. If someone self serves for the first time they need more support. This will allow others who self serve to also know how they can help that person.
#5: Overlook
Put the right guard rails in place and you won’t have too much to do on these projects.
These are the projects that with guidelines and templates, won’t take too much effort on your part. That said, ten minutes of explanation will always get better results than no explanation.
Before you start:
- agree these projects in advance with the other party
Make sure everyone knows who does what on this type of work: we don’t want anyone to feel like we don’t care. Speedy third party projects fall in this bucket, too: we just need to know what they are or where they’re posted. - be detailed but flexible
Flexibility is important, but so are guard rails: explain what’s a big no and inspire people with what works. Be on the lookout for a need to do something different. Brand guidelines or templates are guiding rather than blocking. We can change our approach: for example, updating slide templates because certain people are asking for things.
As you go
- if it’s going wrong…
Don’t bitch about it in public. Talk to that person, suggest useful things and elevate it to Self Serve. If we just slow things, mess things, annoy people and want to feel good about ourselves, we shouldn’t get involved.
Even though these projects “aren’t our job” we should still flag appropriately if we see something really wrong that could cause brand damage.
#6: Wrong to do
Something that’s already done (or we already have something that could be used instead): tell people they’re wasting their time
New people don’t know where things are: help them find those things (or find where something similar is).
Ask questions like:
- ‘have you looked at this?’
- ‘have you talked to X person?’
- ‘isn’t it a bit like X project?’
We could be wrong, but we could be on to something.
Sometimes people will do projects to justify their existence by hitting a metric or creating one. In the midst of low self-esteem, they’ll forget that they got hired for a reason. Justifying isn’t measuring or improving, it stops people from doing their job. Help them be the better them.
Some projects are done for the sake of doing and provide no value other than passing time and wasting others’ time. Question enough to let people see and escalate if needed. Try to understand them throughout this process. At the same time, we shouldn’t question too much so that our time is also wasted.