A User’s Guide to Managing Experience Teams

UX Week 2008

Google’s Margaret Gould Stewart and Graham Jenkin discuss their experience and ideas from their UX Week workshop about managing UX teams. Topics covered in this conversation include:
# Prioritization and project tracking
# How to gain insight into career development paths within a user experience team
# Finding out about performance management
# Discovering how to tailor your own management style
Margaret and Graham also tackled other tough issues during their session, such as:
# Building a culture of constructive feedback
# Developing leadership within a team
# Effectively managing team dynamics
# Evangelizing user experience practices
# Managing stakeholders
Margaret and Graham also had participants of their workshop develop haiku’s about the importance of working with and managing UX Teams. They were kind enough to compile this collection of Haiku’s from the workshop for you. They also provided an example of the leadership cards. These cards can be printed off and shared with members of your team about which characteristics of a leader they deem to be most essential. Not every leader will be strong in all categories, however. Such information can help leaders understand the expectations of those they are working with on a daily basis.