AstraZeneca, Incorporating Design Strategy into Product Governance

Stage 1: Understanding Standardization (4 Weeks)

Task 1: Understanding Current Governance - In many areas, standardization of practices can be essential to organizational efficiency. But, when market realities demand innovation, a overly restrictive approach becomes a constraint that can increase risk and business costs. This had resulted in a massive catalogue of untouched solutions (>90%), with active solutions typically being used only as a necessity.

Having successfully leveraged flexible UX strategies across several projects, I was asked to incorporate this approach into overall IT governance. I immediately set about understanding current cross-disciplinary practices, and how they impacted ongoing projects.

Uncovering the Over-Standardization Trap: Research & Relationships

  • With previous governance documentation typically not being adhered to, an in-depth understanding of actual project realities was essential.
  • Collaborative research results, gleaned from formal activities and informal coffee chats, was shared across domains; I discovered an almost universal frustration with restrictive governance.
  • The use of Agile development practices had been extended across domains in an “efficiency-first” mindset, often creating artificial time constraints, needless waste, and stressful “crunch”.

Stage 2: Introducing Design Flexibility (3 Weeks)

Task 1: Setting & Managing Product Expectations - Especially within industries that are highly-regulated and/or in highly populated/competitive markets, product initiatives can have wildly different contexts and challenges.

It was essential to encourage flexible thinking to identify the most appropriate approach for success (rather than adhere to a “one-size fits all” approach). I unexpectedly learnt that most disciplines within the IT group saw this same core problem, and were eager to contribute towards solving it.

Understanding the Environment: Market Risk & Flexible UX Strategy

  • The biggest challenge was the need to identify specific types of market risk, and convincingly demonstrate design approaches for each.
  • My key takeaway was that the current focus on “agile-first” would ignore project realities for efficiencies (real or imagined).
  • I demonstrated how to select a general strategy according to the greatest risk presented by market conditions; this strategy could be further adapted for specific business constraints.

Expanding the Arsenal Beyond UI: UX Tools & Techniques

  • With an appreciation for flexible product strategy taking root, the next insight project teams needed to shake them out of the habit of a monolithic approach was to see the variety of implementation options and approaches available to them.
  • To demonstrate the breadth of human-centered design tools, I graphed well-known UX deliverables to the competencies that made up the ingredients of good strategy, highlighting the opportunities for meaningful solution value.
  • This instilled the realization that with each project being unique, it was up to each cross-functional team to apply the right ingredients, in the right proportion, at the right time to achieve success for their specific circumstances.

Measuring Success across Contexts: Qualitative & Quantitative Metrics Frameworks

  • With any project underway, the additional complexity of justifying investment with business-relevant results came into play.
  • With an initial framework (UX ResearchOps) being limited to generalized metrics, a tendency to “cherry pick” had developed, creating a disconnect between users and project results.
  • Working with the team, I iterated on refined representations for meaningful metrics to account for different business scenarios (i.e. “Qualitative” & “Quantitative” approaches to measuring product performance).

Stage 3: Showing by Doing (2 Weeks)

Task 1: Unlocking Expertise for Better Solutions - While it was no surprise that AstraZeneca had a lot of smart people working for them, what did surprise me was how little of a contributive voice most of them were allowed. This environment was ripe for UX facilitation activities that gave these voices a chance to lend their skills, experience, and ideas to otherwise troubled project efforts.

I was incredibly proud to be involved with projects where this belief was validated, and the subsequent results were beyond both team and stakeholder expectations.

Inspiring Confidence & Alignment: Ideation & Strategy Workshops

  • We had to adapt how projects kicked-offs were handled; a very hierarchical company structure typically restricted decision-making.
  • Product Ideation & Strategy workshops were introduced to highlight the difference between strategic collaboration vs. project implementation.
  • These sessions were valuable for both new project efforts, and the Global UX Team in terms of relationship-building.

Stage 4: Advocacy through Education (8 Weeks)

Task 1: UX Strategy Awareness & Education - To effectively advocate for this expanded approach to project governance, I pitched to IT leadership that we should share the work we had done up to this point as a series of expert-led courses and “lunch and learn” sessions.

Working with the broader governance team, I worked to condense these new project approaches into digestible segments that would translate across various disciplines (i.e. Design, Development, Product Management, Stakeholders, etc.).

Getting the Word Out: Hosted Online Courses

  • To trust these new ideas, participants had to see them in action; this included relevant aspects of application, potential costs, and advantages.
  • Initial participants provided valuable feedback, allowing us to adapt and refine the content to provide relevance to a wider IT audience.
  • Our key impact was expanding the pipeline for new projects for the Global UX Team, establishing trust through deeper subject-matter expertise.

© 2016 David Service

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