Current State
Each discipline mapped its process across six stages, using the same prompts to capture what started the work, who was involved, and how long it typically took.
UX Process
Workshop
Aligning Design, Research, and Engineering around a shared delivery process to improve planning, ownership, and cross-functional collaboration.
UX Process Workshop
Client
Immuta
Enterprise SaaS · Data Security
Role
Senior Product Designer
Category
- UX Strategy
- Design Operations
- Workshop Facilitation
Year
2023
Problem
The Challenge
Teams were working without a shared process
As Immuta’s UX organization grew, Design, Research, and Engineering developed different ways of planning and delivering work. This made handoffs less consistent, dependencies harder to track, and it wasn’t always clear when work was ready to move from one team to the next.
Where the process broke down
- Planning
Teams estimated work differently.
- Handoff
Ownership and timing weren’t always clear.
- Execution
Design often became a bottleneck.
- Review
Timing and ownership weren’t always clear.
- Completion
Work sometimes started before the previous stage was complete.
Planning
Teams estimated work differently.
Handoff
Ownership and timing weren’t always clear.
Execution
Design often became a bottleneck.
Review
Timing and ownership weren’t always clear.
Completion
Work sometimes started before the previous stage was complete.
Across the process
Dependencies were handled informally.
Objective
Workshop Goal
Build a shared view of how UX work gets done
The goal was to understand how work moved across Design, Research, Engineering, and UX Leadership, then use that shared view to identify gaps and create a more consistent way of working together.
Workshop goals
- Identify friction between teams
- Surface dependencies and handoffs
- Find gaps in planning
- Align on recurring meetings
- Create a shared delivery process
Workshop
Method
Mapping the UX delivery process together
I designed and moderated a workshop that brought Design, Research, and Engineering together to map how work actually moved across UX. Instead of jumping into solutions, I structured the session around three activities that helped us understand the current process, how teams worked together, and where expectations differed.
01 02 Ceremonies
We mapped recurring meetings by team and frequency to understand where teams connected and which meetings depended on one another.
03 Definitions
We compared how each discipline defined key stages and milestones to uncover where teams were working with different expectations.
Current State Mapping
Comparing how each team worked
Each discipline mapped its workflow using the same three questions: What starts the work? Who needs to be involved? How much time does it take?
Using the same structure across teams made it easier to see where their processes aligned, where they differed, and where dependencies existed.
Insights
Key Insights
What the boards revealed
Looking across the workshop boards, recurring patterns began to emerge. Four key insights shaped the operating model that followed.
Design had become the middleman
01
Teams relied on Design at different points in their work. Engineering often waited for final designs, while Research and Product added new inputs along the way. The workshop made these dependencies easier to see.
“Done” meant something different to every team
02
Each discipline had its own idea of when work was complete. Without a shared definition, one team could be finished while another still had work to do.
Planning relied on what people already knew
03
A lot of the team’s planning and estimation lived in people’s heads. The workshop helped bring that knowledge into the open so teams could plan from the same starting point.
Research was spending too much time on logistics
04
Scheduling, recruiting, budgeting, and approvals took up a lot of the Research team’s time. Mapping the process showed where operational work was taking time away from research.
Outcome
Team Operations
Creating a Shared Team Cadence
We established a consistent meeting cadence across Research, Design, Engineering, and UX Leadership. Organizing each meeting by team and frequency clarified when teams needed to connect, how one meeting informed the next, and where broader UX alignment happened.
Cadence
- Team Retrospectives and Refinement (every two weeks, per discipline)
- Joint Refinement Kickoffs across UX teams
- UX Department Demo and Retro the day after team sessions
- Sprint Finalization sessions for UX Leads
Note
Rather than adding meetings for the sake of process, each ceremony answered a specific breakdown identified on the current-state board.
Sprint Ceremony Guide
The workshop surfaced how planning, reviews, and handoffs were actually happening across teams. Mapping these recurring touchpoints made dependencies visible and helped us identify where greater alignment was needed.
5 ceremonies
Per sprint cycle
- 01Team-level
Team Retro + Demo
Each team reviews the sprint, identifies issues to bring to the broader UX team, and prepares completed work for demo.
- 02Department-level
UX Retro + Demo
- Full UX team demos completed work together
- Surfaces key takeaways from individual team retros and demos
- Happens the day after team retros and demos
- 03Team-level
Team Refinement
Individual teams review upcoming work, priorities, and capacity for the next sprint.
- 04Cross-team
Joint Refinement Kickoff
UX teams come together to review sprint plans, workloads, priorities, and cross-team dependencies.
- 05Leadership
Sprint Finalization
UX leads review plans across teams and adjust scope or priorities to ensure the upcoming sprint is realistic.
- Team-level
- Department-level
- Cross-team
- Leadership
A recurring operating cycle: after UX Retro + Demo, Team Refinement kicks off the next sprint.
Impact
What Changed
A clearer way of working across UX
The workshop gave Design, Research, Engineering, and UX Leadership a shared process for planning work, managing dependencies, and staying aligned.
01
Shared planning language
Teams had a common way to talk about stages, ownership, and timing.
02
Clearer handoffs
Dependencies and ownership became easier to see across teams.
03
More consistent planning
A shared cadence created clearer points for refinement, prioritization, and sprint planning.
04
A repeatable process
The team had a documented model they could continue using and refining as the organization evolved.
Designing beyond the interface
This project reinforced that not every UX problem is solved in the product. Sometimes the challenge is how teams plan, communicate, and make decisions together. By making the process visible, we were able to have clearer conversations about what wasn’t working and build a more consistent way of working across UX.
What I took away
- 01
Start by understanding how work actually happens
Mapping the current process before proposing changes helped us focus on real problems instead of assumptions.
- 02
Use structure to create better conversations
Giving each team the same questions made differences in ownership, timing, and expectations easier to see and discuss.
- 03
Design the process around the problems
The goal wasn’t to add more meetings. Each change to the team cadence was tied back to a gap we uncovered during the workshop.
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