Comments on Building the UX Dreamteam - Part 2

Shane Greif — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:35:23 GMT

Great work, Mr. Colfelt!

You’ve touched on so many key areas. I tend to gravitate toward the area of personality. It doesn’t matter if you are designing the latest enterprise application or digging ditches, the skills-balanced group with good personality traits is a better team. These folks will respect and leverage each team member’s strengths and weaknesses, and as you mentioned, will hold their customers in the highest regard.

Thanks for another great piece to add to the toolbox, Anthony! Cheers!

Jamie Owen — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:17:13 GMT

Beating the multicultural drum again, how would you adapt these strategies when situations involve assembling a dreamteam consisting of one or more members from different cultures? Communication styles are different, for example, particularly in a formal scenario like an interview, and this may affect an interviewer’s insight into the potential team member’s character and personality. Desirable traits may be obscured by mismatched interpersonal protocols, like expecting candor during an interview to be a creativity gauge for someone from a culture which practices a careful attention to position and hierarchy. Or the hiring managers mentioned in the Org Context section may have “gut instinct” fine-tuned for their own cultural familiarity, unfairly dismissing an applicant from another country or group.

Cultural interaction and understanding bolsters opportunities and spawns solutions—creative and analytical, tactical and strategic—born of diversity within the ranks. Depending on a firm’s goals or global footprint, this may be an important dynamic for the UX dreamteam.

Again, rhetorical questions: reflecting aloud…
More on multi- and intercultural dynamics: “Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind” by Geert Hofstede.

Anthony Colfelt — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 01:13:17 GMT

Great question, Robert. A lot depends on how people measure their success and fulfillment. Lets say that is tied to the quality of their output/product, as it often is in situations where expectations aren’t met. If no space, time or money is put toward the execution of quality, it will be hard for the entire organization to feel proud of their output and in turn, themselves. The issue could lie in so many areas, it’s hard to generalize a solution. To ensure a good environment, you might investigate three ‘Ps’ of potential weakness: Process, Politics & People. A process should ensure the right people are involved at the right times, doing the right activities. The political environment should not be adversarial or so competitive that it undermines morale, productivity or the success of the company. The people in the organization need to be supportive of best practice in all disciplines, as well as be appropriately skilled and utilized. If all these are right, then your Dreamteam should thrive.

Andreas Ringdal — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 20:14:24 GMT

@Anthony Colfelt
I am missing one role here, the one man UX team. In smaller companies, the UX is often the responsibility of a single person. This person can’t cover all aspects of UX, but have to assign single tasks to other individuals of the team.
Required skills
– ability to identify the UX related skills of the rest of the development team
– ability to delegate
– social skills are needed both to get other members to accept the tasks you “assign” to them, and convince the project manager that it’s necessary
– knowledge of all skills listed in part 1 and 2 of the article. And preferably experience in several of the required UX skills
– ability to handle external consultants hired to perform some of the required UX tasks

Andreas Ringdal — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 19:58:33 GMT

@Dan Willis
I partially agree with you. If the aim is to maintain status quo, then discard the ones in need of variety. But if you want to take the product further, or expand into new ideas, you have to think differently. Then you will need people that use variety to thrive, you have to make sure that they have somewhere to present and realize their ideas.
Being creative and productive, but with someone further up the hierarchy discarding the suggestions continuously just to play safe with the existing product, is demoralizing.

Andreas

Terry Bleizeffer — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:17:12 GMT

@Anthony: Another good article. Lots of good points there, with practical tips.

Some comments:
1. I liked the distinctions you made in the “Practitioner vs Managerial” section, but I disagree that the distinctions are between practitioners and managers. For example, you say “Good bosses are quietly also coaches, therapists, facilitators, communicators, organizers and politicians.” I would change that to say “Good leaders are…”, and note that people can be a leader without being a manager. Then you say, “People who find less satisfaction in helping others to be effective are better placed as well-compensated senior practitioners.” I would say, “People who find less satisfaction in helping others to be effective should not be hired, and if you accidentally hire someone like that, it will effectively preclude them from being a well-compensated senior practitioner until they change their behavior.” We probably all know examples of me-first individuals who are so ridiculously talented that they can succeed in spite having no interest in helping anyone else, but they are the exception to the rule. For me, it’s a simple arithmetic… the more experience you have and/or the higher up you move in the practitioner ranks, the more time you need to spend on mentoring and coaching as a prerequisite for additional upward mobility.

2. Another screening tip on personality/character to avoid toxicity: During interviews, ask candidates to give specific examples of personality conflicts they had with co-workers and how they handled it, and ask them to give specific examples of situations in which they helped a co-worker without being asked and without being recognized for it. Most people have no trouble thinking of multiple positive examples… toxic people have a really hard time answering that without becoming negative.

3. In my experience, “Strategic” thinking is something that comes with experience—“newbies” should not be expected to think strategically (it’s unfair to expect it of them), and if someone doesn’t develop an ability to think strategically with experience, it’s probably going to be career limiting. To put it another way, I think of “tactical” as a foundation, with “strategic” added to the foundation over time. The ability to think tactically should never go away, though someone might eventually get into a job role that doesn’t require much tactical focus.

4. Your comment about Agile was interesting. I agree that Agile environments tend to be frenetic, but I think the most interesting difference between Agile and Waterfall is that Agile is consistent over time, whereas in Waterfall there are less frequent but more stressful crunchtimes. Some people like knowing that they are going to be just as busy one month from now or six months from now as they are now, other people like the idea of working ridiculous hours for 3 months then having 3 months of relative downtime before the next crunch hits. So while it’s true that in Agile there doesn’t seem to be time to catch one’s breath, the upside is that there usually isn’t periods of extreme stress like in Waterfall… the stress is spread out more.

Terry Bleizeffer — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 12:46:26 GMT

@Justin : There’s a large banner in the hallway of my kids’ elementary school that reads: “Character is doing the right thing when no one is looking.”

I always liked that line. Well said.

Robert Skrobe — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:07:06 GMT

Hi Anthony,

Interesting and well written article. I’ve been looking forward to Part 2 for a while now.

Do you think the UX Dreamteam you outline can operate in a work culture that can’t meet their personal and professional expectations of success and fulfillment? For the caliber of talent and temperament the Dreamteam would contain, what type of ideal environment should exist?

Anthony Colfelt — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:50:16 GMT

Hi Justin, your grandfather was a wise man. I hadn’t looked at it this way, but appreciate the difference between personality and character you’re drawing here. As you say, it really is what’s on the inside (character) that’s the important thing to try and get at when interviewing people. It’s hard to do in an interview, because you get personality, but not necessarily character. I’ve been burned by this first hand at a company I once worked for. A perfectly charming chap on the surface turned out to have a toxic character. Perhaps checking references is an avenue to explore in assessing this? But can you expect real honesty from referees who have been hand-picked for a favorable review of the candidate?

Anthony Colfelt — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 04:46:00 GMT

Dan, you’ve made a useful distinction there between variety and context switching. Thanks. I didn’t express that very well, but was thinking more along the lines of what you’ve said when I wrote this. Quickly switching contexts (i.e. completely different environments, problems, skill requirements and even sometimes teammates) is what I was trying to express when I referred to variety in a somewhat hamfisted way. Good point about the political skills required of the in-house player too. :)

Jeremy Horn — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:04:55 GMT

Excellent article. Too many people look only at the skills, and not the personalities, that make up a strong UX team. This is definitely being included within my weekend reading…

http://tpgblog.com/2008/07/11/the-product-guys-weekend-re…

Jeremy Horn
The Product Guy
http://tpgblog.com

Chris Butler — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 13:19:02 GMT

Anthony,

I think Dan Willis is on to something here, in that depending upon various factors, an “innie” or an “outie” could be preferable when assembling a project team. The level of flexibility is really critical for either category. For an “innie” at a smaller company, the likelihood that he or she is managing several roles is high, so being able to flex among various points of view, tasks, schedules and goals is necessary for success. For an “outie,” being able to quickly perceive and adopt goals of various organizations is necessary for success, though it’s more likely that the role or task type will be more consistent for this person.

We’ve had a lot of success with using the DiSC assessment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DISC_assessment) to analyze individuals situational behavior when creating new roles, evaluating current roles and distribution, and hiring and promoting. While it’s not a perfect indicator of the likelihood of an individual’s success in a certain role (according to my profile, I was likely to fail at the role I spent over a year and a half in and I feel that it was pretty successful), it’s very effective in anticipating the dynamic between several people and indicating the best way to interact among them.

Lastly, Justin Kerr (with whom I work at Newfangled) is right about the personality/character difference. It isn’t until an employee has experienced the full picture (all the highs and lows) of their job that their true character will be revealed.

Chris

Justin Kerr — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:17:46 GMT

Enjoyable and informative article.

I was especially glad you emphasized an individual’s personality and how that can effect the entire team. However, I think most of the traits you list as “personality” (selflessness, humility, humor, empathy) are really a person’s character. One team member may have a “bubbly” personality but is passive aggressive and difficult to work with while another team member is more reserved in their demeanor yet they go out of their way to provide more than is required of them. My grandfather used to say that personality is who you are in front of others but character is what you do when no one is looking.

The difference between the two terms (in the context of your article) may be semantic but the importance of character/personality is key in building a team.

Anya Kogan — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:57:04 GMT

Great article! I’ve read competing theories on hiring as well as witnessed a number of smart (and not) hiring decisions. I believe we tend to over-estimate the value of our hiring intuition and often hire people based on our like of them rather than a solid understanding of their skill set. I would be curious to hear about the experience of others and how they have balanced their intuition with a guided interview process while making hiring decisions.

Dan Willis — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:20:19 GMT

Nice work on this article!
While I’m digging most of what you say, I’m a bit uncomfortable with your overview of innies vs. outties, specifically the requirements you give for in-house staff. You write: “those building in-house teams should discount candidates who need variety to thrive.” I don’t think it’s a question of variety because in-house work can be wildly diverse and varied.
What’s different is that an outtie may have no consistent elements of their work experience from one project to the next. As a consultant for Sapient, I recently hopped from a Web strategy project with a finance organization to a wayfinding project at the American Museum of Natural History. There was almost nothing from the first project that had anything to do with the second. The ability to shift from a strategy engagement to a wayfinding project was less about variety and more about how well an individual can start completely over … and usually at a full sprint. That’s a unique skill that won’t get much use as an in-house staff member. But that’s only a bad thing when the ex-outtie is addicted to the shifting. In that case, I’d agree that they should be discounted from consideration.
I also think you’re underplaying the need for in-house staffers to be politically savvy. Not only are innies’ heavily affected by the politics of their organizations, they have to do so without a major piece of mojo that consultants take for granted. An innie can repeat a point a hundred times and gain no traction, but as soon as an outtie comes into the organization and makes the same comment just once, it suddenly becomes An Amazing Insight. So innies are typically navigating political waters at the same time they’re fighting for credibility.
One last comment: I love your line that “a creative person doesn’t see a glass half empty or half full, but instead asks why it should be a glass at all,” but it’s worth mentioning that contrarian a**holes ask the same thing … and they’d be a bad fit for just about any environment.