The Challenge
In early 2021 Central Retail embarked on an ambitious journey to reorganise, rebuild and re-platform their organisation and tech stack, to support an Omni-channel future, allowing customers to shop however they choose.
The Approach and Response
By analysing the organisations past structure, operations and performance, I developed a series of strategic frameworks to realign the envisioned product design org. These frameworks were designed to support the omni-channel mission and unlock and support organic growth.
My Contribtion
My Contribution
Worked along side other Heads-of-Department (Product, CRO and Research) to define our product and design vision, and keystone metrics that define them.
Drive product roadmap and budget planning activities.
Managed headcount and resource allocation budgets for design org.
Established design org reporting structure.
Defined job descriptions, wrote recruitment pitches.
Established recruiting and hiring practices.
Interviewed, hired, managed and mentored product designers at all levels .
Scaled the product design team from 2 to 10 in 6 months.
Introduced and implemented “Design Ops”, a discipline that ensures practices, processes and systems are in place to support high-functioning design teams.
Identified, procured and implemented tools for design and productivity.
Introduced Atlasian tools to plan and manage design delivery.
Managed design team Jira and Confluence spaces for design team collaboration and continuity.
Owned end-to-end design delivery for responsive web and mobile apps.
Defined and standardised delivery workflows for product design org.
Used story telling to help connect strategy and vision to execution.
Engaged with and presented to C-suite stake-holders, across entire organisation.
Deliverables
Product and design vision rationale, definitions and roadmap.
Design operations scope definition and implementation roadmap.
Design org. hiring strategy, new reporting structure and SOP's.
Retooling rationale and implementation roadmap.
High level project plans for priority projects.
Delivery Team
Head of Design, Head of Product, Head of CRO, Head of Research, Head of HR
Timeline
Steak-holder presentations and eventual buy-in, over a period of 3 months.