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Setting the basics for delivering Design at Scale™

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Welcome to the Jira for Designers series brought to you by Design at Scale™ – Academy. In the following articles, we explore how designers can get the best out of Agile(↘︎Link), Agile UX(↘︎Link), and Experience at Scale(↘︎Link), let alone the Atlassian environment(↘︎Link)

Disclaimer: I’m not an Atlassian employee or paid by Atlassian(↘︎Link) or Figma(↘︎Link). I joined the journey as a product designer in early 2000 in a heavy development environment. As a designer, I have explored a dozen ways not to use Jira and Confluence, slowly progressing through CSM, CPO, CLeSS, ACP 200, and ACP 600 certificates. I remain a designer and trusted contributor to design integration in complex development environments. The opinions are my own – failures and successes led to form the core of the Design at Scale™ framework, which I hope you all enjoy.

Jira for Designers: Design
Figure01: Flower for a representing craft

Design 

Let’s begin with design. The design as a discipline is mainly individual. Departed from art and personal expression, Gootember discovered the press(↘︎Link); the bible took first dominance as the religion(↘︎Link), and education(↘︎Link) spread mostly across Europe. Like the other books during the Renaissance(↘︎Link), designing started shaping its purpose in the 19th century when it became a function. Designing books(↘︎Link), supporting soviet propaganda posters(↘︎Link), and early Bauhaus(↘︎Link) exploration design has become more democratised and the domain of intellectuals interested in simplicity. The essence where the form follows the function(↘︎Link). Wars have its expectations from design in terms of uniforms, short communication patterns, dashboards, and first levels of sophisticated infographics.

Visualising the information has become the domain of Ladislav Sutnar(↘︎Link) – a Czech designer who emigrated to the United States, Jan Tschichodl(↘︎Link) and later Adria Fritiuger(↘︎Link), who designed the most inspiring navigation system for Charles Ge Gaul airport in Paris(↘︎Link)

Information and management were the keys—what needed to be done and when. Methods were changing, and new ways of working were being adopted, such as moving documentation from printouts and folders to more digital repositories(↘︎Link).

Jira for Designers: Operation
Figure02: Rectangle and circle communication patterns.

Operation

Most certainly, you’ll hear about Waterfall(↘︎Link) and Agile(↘︎Link). Before we declare war, let’s say at least that Waterfall has built pyramids, bridges and even a goddamn Chinese wall. So before someone proclaims and starts selling you a specific way of working, let’s debate the operational context. Most Catholic churches in the old continent of Europe were built under a stage and gate – a so-called waterfall – we all admire to the present day. 

Equally, outside of the architecture, we have improved ways of working and managing in print and digital space. Where the operation plays a vital role, methods evolve as the project becomes more complex, and we start managing more complex propositions(↘︎Link). When the web came along, we moved everything to digital. 

Many companies still conduct digital operations using spreadsheets from the Late Middle Ages(↘︎Link). With all the talk about the new era of project management, the question remains whether we can ever move from the tables. Even today, agencies winning prestigious awards are still delivering their workflows in Word, Excel, mail, and JPEG repeat scenarios, claiming a positive impact on the client and the business.

Jira for Designers: Operational Excellence

Operation Excellence 

If providing a servicing agency wants to claim “the future ways of working”(↘︎Link), we need to have a better understanding of what that really means. We need to understand that we need to unpack what the future of Ways of Working looks like.

Let’s paint the scenario to understand what is really at stake here:
You are running a design team of ten in a business of roughly 100 people. This includes hiring, allocation, time management, project management, and multiple clients you serve alongside your digital SaaS product. That means your designers operate in complex environments, requiring sharing the knowledge (internally and externally) upon which many parties make informed decisions and deliver tasks on time. To organise such a workforce, you’ll need at least 3-5 product owners (or project managers). However, the budget is tied, and you need to run a self-organised team – what choice do you have?

Lucky for you, there is an answer: Design at Scale™(↘︎Link). The above scenario has been implemented and tested well in small, medium, and large organisations worldwide. I’m not saying this lightly, as culture and persistence play a vital role in achieving such harmony. Equally, the buy-in from C-Level Management(↘︎Link) plays the role, but not as big as the overall proven 43% saving on operational cost that you and your team can reuse on additional development or reducing the time to market.

Jira for Designers: Other Tools

Other tools

There is no magic formula here; it is only a well-defined and well-run dual-track operation that allows both parties to manage spikes and crises, achieve high retention in the problem, and, therefore, minimise the spikes to a minimum by making informed decisions about producing data(↘︎Link).

No Slack, Teams, or WhatsApp chats all task-based environments leading to one objective – output that drives the outcome. Plenty of articles, books and theory podcasts have been recorded. We will reference the very few here that have the right amount of detail to make you a little more informed in your decision. 

Jira for Designers: Atlassian

Atlassian

Welcome to Atlassian(↘︎Link).
Do you need one? Probably not; I’m not here to convince you otherwise. What I am here to do is to show you how Atlassian works for me and my partners and why it’s still No.1 in choice over Notion, JetBrains, ClickUp, Zappier and many others.

Note: I’ve been with Atlassian for nearly 20 years, starting at Silicon Graphics in 2003. The majority of my client work is organised in the same fashion across Confluence and Jira, so that is the case in the very present day. I can still find which tasks were fulfilled back in 2005 – not that we need it. But to show that the system is powerful and flexible enough to accommodate other propositions.     

Equally, I’m not saying that you can not achieve similar or better with different tools – what I’ll be stating here is the ability to drive a complex design proposition by running an Atlassian environment set-up. Let’s dive right in. The following article will look under the hood of “Kanban for Designers” and why it’s a great management tool for designers. 

Happy scaling through design!

Hey, I’m Jiri Mocicka.
London-based Design Director, Trusted Advisor and Author of
Design at Scale™. The method that empowers individuals to shape the future organisation through design.
If you have a question, join our Community and reach out to like-minded individuals who scale design propositions. An online Academy can help you to find your feed in teams of 01, 10, and 100, supported by Grid Magazine and Supply section, where we weekly bring more insights on how to become a design leader in your organisation

Tagged: Agile · Collaboration · Jira · Mentoring · Method · Organisations · UI · UX · UXR
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