There are several points during the design process where we might identify cross-stage collaboration needs. It is recommended to involve potential partners as early as possible. It is best to determine if there is a collaboration need quickly rather than have to backtrack later when it is too late.
During the discovery and research phase, it is essential to pay attention to the user journey or other types of research reports; from the research insights, we can assess if the user is using multiple features that cross-stages or if the pain points involve features owned by different teams.
During the design phase, there could be signs that we need to contact other teams for potential collaboration. First, the target user is the primary persona of another stage; second, the use case you are targeting is part of a JTBD belonging to another stage; third, the feature you are designing exists in a page/area belonging to another stage; and last, some part of the user’s journey is using some features that belong to another stage.
For Pajamas contributions, it is a collaboration-first approach. When designing a component, we want to ensure that the component is suitable for all areas. When we design reusable features and components, such as search or filtering, it is better to collaborate with more than one designer to consider the frequency and complexity of these features in the product.
GitLab has a wide range of product features. Several resources can help us identify the Directly Responsible Individual (DRI) for each feature:
During the planning phase, if you can anticipate a certain amount of effort will be needed from other team members, it’s better to contact them as soon as possible. Suggestions:
At the problem validation stage, the goal of the collaboration is to make sure the problems are the right ones to solve by all parties, so it’s recommended to have the following information:
To execute effective collaboration, come to an agreement on the following with your team and relevant design partners:
The collaboration methods can be flexible. You can collaborate like design pairs. Or use formal frameworks to help designers work together, consider using those, especially when there are more than two designers. Design Pod is a framework that has clearly defined roles and responsibilities and is tasked with achieving a high-impact business goal. If the design collaboration is more aimed at exploitation without a clear business goal, consider using a Design Jam instead.
