Timegate Redesign
Timegate, now rebranded as Timegate+, is a comprehensive workforce management solution, designed specifically for industries with distributed workforces—such as cleaning, security, and facilities management—Timegate+ streamlines operations, enhances compliance, and boosts productivity. That is the elevator pitch at a high level, but there are many areas that were not originally created with a designer on the team. However, this endeavour is a first for our company because we are implementing the Product Model (compliments of Marty Cagan) and we are a pilot-project being the first product model style team for Workwave. Below I will showcase some of the differences with the new Product Model trio, as well as the work we have completed up until now.
Role
Product
Platform(s)
Areas
Product Designer
Timegate
Web & Mobile
Design, Prototyping, Research
Empowered Teams
Cross-functional product teams, or in this case, the core trio (product manager, product designer, product engineer) own the problem and are empowered to find the solution. This trio is empowered to make the decisions on the outcomes, not the stakeholders or C-Suite.
Product Model Pilot
We had new management step in for WorkWave, and one of the big changes was bringing a new way to shape the product teams. The new leadership is testing out the “Product Model” and using this project as it’s Pilot-Project to see how it goes. If it succeeds, perhaps we will create more Product Model teams and change the way WorkWave shapes it’s teams in the future. Here is a quick breakdown of what the Product Model looks like, and some of it’s key features.
Customer/Outcome Focus
Teams are driven by solving real customer problems and achieving business outcomes—not just delivering features. Getting in front of actual users, and building a relationship with them, is key for the success of the Product Model.
Product Designer
Greg Webster
Discovery & Delivery
Emphasizes continuous product discovery (validating ideas quickly with users via rapid prototypes and experiments) alongside delivery. Instead of quarterly, or even yearly releases, there’s a strong push to have small releases every two weeks.
Product Engineer
Dan E.
This Product trio (myself, Dan & Dan) have already begun our journey to redesign Timegates scheduling experience. Dan F. and Dan E. have lots of experience working with Timegate, and are aware of some of the pain points our customers probably experience. But the point of the Product Model isn’t to assume problems, create a backlog of features/stories that are defined by others (stakeholders), then create agile teams with limited say in what is built. We are the ones who are conducting user interviews, extrapolating data and discovering the true pain points of our users, and then creating several prototypes to test with our users to determine the greatest outcome with our redesign. Currently, we have conducted a dozen user interviews, and are starting to create prototypes to test. Below is a few snapshots of our journey thus far.
Product Manager
Dan F.
OKRs, OST’s, & Interviews
We started knowing that the scheduling experience wasn’t the greatest. We didn’t know How our users were scheduling, What their biggest issues were, Why they used Timegate the way they used Timegate, and Where they were spending the majority of their time scheduling. For our initial pass, we created some OKR’s that we thought would be great to see from our endeavors. and wanted to narrow this list down to 3 that we want to validate with our users. What we didn’t know, is that we ultimately would only keep 1 of these original 7…
Our original list of 7 proposed OKR’s before we spoke with our users