Redesigning an enterprise PPM platform used by 90% of the Fortune 500.

• Strategic Alignment: elevated design understanding and ensured consistent quality standards across a wide variety of stakeholders, bringing UX to the forefront of product strategy — recognized by internal stakeholders as having "saved this product."
• Enhanced Usability & Retention: a 73% reduction in time on task for the Admin module, plus a noticeable increase in NPS and overall usability metrics.
• Operational Efficiency: the multi-view Roadmapping module solved critical version control and communication breakdown issues.

PPM helps large companies break down silos and gives anyone, from the CEO to part-time contractors, visibility into planned work and the status of current works-in-progress. PPM is customized to each business' specific needs and processes — customers like JP Morgan have different needs than Boeing, Coca-Cola, Amazon, Ikea, or Disney. The image below is an older example of the complexity and interdependencies of a company like Disney, which was often a good reference in the design process.

Modules like Conversations, Tasks, Risks, Documents, Financials, Issues, Changes, Staffing, Projects, Administration, Timesheets, and Roadmapping worked in unison and shared relevant data that kept people and teams in sync to help companies function.

Over the years, PPM had fallen behind in its usability and overall business value. As UX began to modernize interfaces industry-wide, PPM fell further behind and lost customers. I was hired to redesign the product from the ground up. Below is an example of the information architecture and overall UI at the time.

I worked on PPM for three years and achieved the following high-level accomplishments:

• Lead design of 17 PPM modules including: Admin, Roadmapping, Projects, Analytics on mobile and desktop applications
• Grew team from one to four designers with one researcher
• Worked with Product Management to co-design a product-discovery and feature-delivery system that helped Engineering, Design and PM align, set clear priorities and share the same vocabulary
• Worked closely with a wide variety of stakeholders to elevate design understanding and ensure designs were consistent and met quality standards
• Designed component system and managed component system backlog
• Created a culture of self-driven designers, empowered to help drive the product roadmap and help bring UX to the forefront of product decisions
• Consulted with Executive leadership on Product Strategy amongst the portfolio

Note: this case study highlights the design of the Admin and Roadmapping modules.

User testing revealed time on task was reduced by 73%. In the deliverable below, the attribute details of a project can be referenced within the last tab of any project — a location that allows for business planning, continuity, and ease. If an issue ever came up, the end user could call an Admin to reference exactly where a field lived in the template details.

PM came to my team with many ideas that didn't quite fit together. After a lot of deliberation, we distilled them into simple diagrams to align ourselves and PM around the problem. One of my designers created the diagram below, which helped frame many conversations about work breakdown structures — thinking in first principles was key to the group's ability to reason clearly about such complex topics.

Other principles my team defined for Roadmapping:

• Set the right context, at the right levels — use of a common framework across the various issues allows for integration, synchronisation and alignment of the organization
• Share one vision, but embrace diversity — be flexible to the different strategy issues companies, divisions, teams and their employees face
• Be scalable at different organizational levels — apply both broad and specific analyses, embrace innovation and scenario evaluation

I created the diagram below to help align the UX and PM teams on the data flow model called the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS):

Hypothetically, during a meeting, a director can build and share a roadmap with the executive team and speak to metrics and status updates that make sense at that level. Later that day, the same director can sit with their direct reports and share a more detailed, granular view of how the work is being done day-to-day. Behind the scenes, WBS tracks the progress of these projects in real time and presents it to each persona, at each level of the company, in the way that makes the most sense to them.

The interaction spec below was delivered to Engineering and was also given to the VP of Product to present at the company's annual customer conference.

Over time, our NPS started to improve and key metrics for usability steadily increased, too:

A lot of this success was made possible by my direct team. That said, I think the reason the product was successful was due to the integration between PM and UX. A lot of trust was built — we communicated fluidly and embraced the wildest of ideas while keeping the customer in mind and researching assumptions early and often together. Below is some feedback from internal stakeholders: