People · Hiring · Product process
Design Leadership · T‑Bank
Three stories about people, hiring and process — and about mechanisms that do not need me involved all the time.
Context
Growth made the invisible process expensive
As the team grew, people held different assumptions about where discovery ended, who owned each decision, which artefacts were required, and when work was ready to move forward.
The result was weak problem exploration, underprepared tasks, repeated discussions, returns for rework, and instability in delivery. Design absorbed much of that ambiguity.
Trigger
More design capacity would have amplified the problem
Andrei was spending increasing time manually synchronising people, restoring focus to the customer problem, and compensating for the missing workflow.
He made the difficult call that additional design capacity should wait until the team understood and improved the operating system around the work.
Change
Build the process with the team, not for the team
The initiative initially met resistance because process was seen as bureaucracy. Andrei opened the discussion, facilitated team-wide sessions, helped identify root causes, formed a working group, and aligned the approach across disciplines.
- discovery and delivery stages
- roles and ownership
- key artefacts and transition criteria
- synchronisation and review rituals
- release preparation
Outcome
A shared map reduced operational tension
The new operating map created a common scenario for the work, clearer ownership, stronger discovery, fewer returns, and calmer collaboration between roles.
It also influenced the Jira workflow, the approach to measuring time to market, and the transparency of delivery. The process is still used by the team.
Reflection
Process is shared understanding, not documentation
The change emerged through conflict, but making the workflow explicit reduced tension. If repeating the work, Andrei would sell the change more gradually through concrete examples instead of applying abrupt organisational pressure.