a designer and strategist
02
Facilitating a 3-Year Product Strategy
How might we rally multiple stakeholder groups to develop a holistic vision and strategy across two critical public-facing websites?​
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Client
US Treasury Department, Bureau of the Fiscal Service
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Date
2024
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My Role
Design Strategist and Facilitator
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Note: Image content has been genericized or otherwise altered to remove sensitive or non-public information
Context and Approach
The client manages usaspending.gov and fiscaldata.gov which are mandated by the Data Transparency Act. They collect data from across the US federal government and provide it in raw and digestible formats to the public, professionals, and researchers. The team consists of multiple federal and contractor teams. The client wanted to build a long term strategy to tackle policy and operational challenges as well as gain efficiencies across both sites while keeping them distinct. I designed and facilitated a multiday workshop to build this strategy collaboratively
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I organized the workshops around a one-page Strategic Framework, because if your strategy doesn't fit on one page it's not strategic enough! I adapted this from brand and communications strategies from my marketing days. It takes teams from the biggest objectives and goals through their strategies down to sample activities and illustrative success metrics.
Methods
With 30 participants representing all teams from data engineers to execs backend engineers to designers in a hybrid environment, I designed a 2.5 day workshop series to guide the team through development of at least the top half of the Strategic Framework. Collaborating with the client before and during sessions meant overnight or even on-the-fly facilitation and activity changes to maximize the value of everyone's time and collective brainpower
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Roll over the cards below to learn more about selected activities
To break folks out of the 2 week sprint rhythm and encourage 3 year thinking, I asked them to imagine a bold future where the team succeeds wildly
After establishing strategic possibilities, everyone got 3 poker chips to place bets on across audience and product priorities. Scarcity drives hard choices!
The teams populated an extended "experience stack" as a venn diagram to elicit the opportunities to share infrastructure and design patterns across the two sites
By diagramming of the effects of strategic activities and tagging engagement, money, time, or burden reduction, backend engineers and UX designers alike saw the full value of their work
The last activity helped the team transition to post-workshop work by mapping participants' enthusiasm for particular topics and have them claim ownership to carry them forward
Field Notes and Results
Participant feedback was incredibly positive with the team experiencing the impact of designed and firm-but-gently facilitated deep work. I synthesized workshop data across paper and digital formats and provided additional recommendations including strategic questions, priorities, and concrete next steps for the lead client. I provided a sheet of "provocations" of creative ways to organize the types of collaboration and ways of working identified such as having shark tank competitions or having team members embed with the "other" team for a short period of time.
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The client was able to successfully finalize the 3-year strategy and gain approval and support from executives in a shorter than usual timeframe.