I joined the PitchBook 2022 to help develop a UX team culture, maximize performance and employee retention in our product group. After a year of investment, we have had several successes, expanding to a team of twenty (including myself), with three design managers and sixteen individual contributors. Our Director Michael, split work across teams in partnership with myself as we grew.
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 made 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.
