Designing processes and an ecosystem to help innovators and engineering teams build great products faster.
Grupa's simple mission is to enable innovators and product teams build great products faster. Grupa sets out to reduce the hiring time spent by product owners when building an engineering team, and remove the lags and uncertainties faced while building your product. I joined the team in 2018 and was tasked with refining and automating the process that was fully offline at the time; we launched a first version in 2019.
While the v1 served the primary purpose of connecting stakeholders and managing product development, we quickly realised we needed an upgrade to the user experience and user interface as we got Innovators and Product Teams to use the platform.
Based on the feedback and learnings from our customers, we decided on a complete redesign of the Grupa web app.
To start the redesign we scheduled a 3-day design sprint with the goal of gaining clarity on the direction we were to take with the redesign. This sprint involved every member of our relatively small team (9 people).
On Day 1 of the design sprint, we had everyone write down complaints and recommendations they have each received from customers over time, and complaints they personally have from using the Grupa-v1. For each complaint, they had to add a corresponding "How Might We" recommendation.
This was very helpful as we got perspectives from every department in the company (engineering, business, finance, marketing, product).
We found out that some complaints and recommendations appeared multiple times, hence, I had to make sense of the rough thoughts from everyone, and group them into different categories that represented the different actors in the product. On Day 2 everyone dot-voted on the thoughts (now categorised, arranged and cleaned up to remove redundancies) to pick which ones they thought were the most important for this phase. The top-level decision makers got extra votes.
On Day 3, I further grouped the top voted thoughts into different "experiences" and drew out user flows referencing the recommendations already listed in the "How Might We" notes from Day 1. Most times I could make quick decisions on recommendations to use because I understand the engineering structure and business side of the product. In cases where I couldn't decide, I quickly consulted with the Engineering lead, the CEO, and/or the finance guy.
The clarity gained from this process really helped me narrow down focus and cut the giant to size. It wasn't the typical design sprint as designed by the awesome folks at GV, we had to tweak it to suit our own peculiarities, especially because we had just recently moved fully remote due to the covid19 pandemic.
It’s increasingly difficult for startups to find and hire top tech talent, it sometimes takes years of searching and getting burnt to finally get a top team together. Grupa solves this by recruiting cross-functional Product Teams from FAANGs and making them available to you at the click of a button.
Our focus was on making this matching and hiring process seamless, to remove friction and evoke enough confidence in Product Owner as we guide them to make a decision.
One part of the Grupa process that always gets rave reviews is the pre kick-off phase during which the Product Team and the Product Owners collaborate to refine, test and validate the idea, and to plan the product development roadmap.
Redesigning this for v2, the focus was on clarity and ease of use.
Where are we? What’s happening? How fast are we moving? Are we on track to meet the deadlines? When will we be done? How am I sure of the quality of the product I’m getting/building?
We designed in checks and balances that answers these and many more questions or uncertainties that come with building products.
This was my first time leading a remote design sprint for an already existing product. It was an interesting challenge, and I enjoyed every bit of it. Given the chance again, I'd definitely do some things differently.
I learn everyday working at Grupa, one big challenge I had while doing the visual design for Grupa (beta) was managing the design system such that it scales seamlessly across the product. I think I did okay, but since "okay" is not good enough, I'd have to go back and properly standardise it.
This was also my first time working actively as a Product Manager, it was exciting. *Hats off🎩* to all the amazing Product Managers out there.
