I joined the PitchBook team in August 2022 and began developing a UX team culture to maximize performance and employee retention. When I started, there was only a director and myself to split the work. After a year of investment, we have had several successes, expanding to a team of twenty, with three design managers including myself, and sixteen contributors.
Success Factors
Staffing & Capacity Planning
We hired and onboarded two new designers to our pods (we utilize a pod model to enable engineering teams, based on the book "Team Topologies" by Manuel Pais and Matthew Skelton. To support the project commitments mades in 2022 and going forward, we needed to expand our team from 4 to 6 designers. Both found their onboarding experience to be very well planned and continue to thrive here.
Team Engagement & Retention
We improved our team NPS from -23 (before I joined the team) to 30+ for two straight quarters, leading the organization against three domains: Product Management, Product Design, & Engineering. This came from efforts to build up team activities, feedback cycles, and more equitable work distributions across the team.
Process Codification
We constructed leveling guides and feedback loops for every contributor. I held a series of career conversations with each designer, working to develop an 18-month plan for growing their UX career. This simplified the touchpoints that we could look at their work, as well as standardized the artifacts we review as a leadership team.