Introduction
Our company is an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Premier consulting partner for extensive experience designing, developing, and managing mission-critical applications for Government, Education, and Commercial clients.
We had started losing business from our potential clients because we were not delivering our projects on time.
Uncovering the business problem
I decided to address the problem using the design thinking approach and invited the involved stakeholders for mutual discussion. The outcome of that meeting was “Project Managers are not assigning the tasks on time to the development team for them to work and deliver tasks on time”.
Understanding users
As we have an open-minded and fast-paced workplace, I designed and conducted a focused study group with six project managers to visualize their current and ideal solutions. I also recorded the observations on how they manage the resource allocation activities.
Out of all PMs, Alina was facing comparatively more problems and more expressing and able to talk on the behalf of all project managers.
“Most of the time, I am asking individuals regarding their availability.”
- Alina
“Using Skytracker resource allocation module, which is not friendly at all.”
- Alina
“Skytracker dashboard is not showing the status of resource allocation for instance, who is available, over-utilized or underutilized.”
- Alina
What they need ?
A Resource Management module with a user-friendly interface, quick to assign the tasks, edit/delete the allocations, and provide a visualization of the resource’s utilization within projects and for the overall organization.
How might we empower Alina however she can assign the tasks on time?
- HMW
How might we provide Alina better visibility of resource utilization ?
- HMW
Ideation as we have freedom
We brainstormed and generated fifteen ideas. And out of fifteen, we selected three tangible ideas to move forward.
An AI voice assistant follows the project manager’s instructions and acts accordingly.
- 1
A rich interactive calendar, the same as when we conduct meetings can simplify the learning curve.
- 2
Creating a centralized WhatsApp group
- 3
It’s time to finalize the best idea that gives more value to users and is feasible for the development team.
An interactive calendar idea got more votes to move forward and ultimately give more value to users.
- Prioritization matrix
Design explorations
--Make the interaction fun.
--Sense of achievement.
--Need for speed
- Design Principles
Interactive calendars came up with three different calendar concepts based on Microsoft calendar, Google calendar, and our calendar. Used Invision tool and tested these three variations on the users for two days. And the 3rd option was a clear winner because it was giving more flexibility to the users.
High fidelity
How We Got There?
- Alignment with the team for Who, What and Wow
- Sharing updates to the user experience
- Inviting the users
Observe. Reflect. Make
-
Remove Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays from calendar.
- As we are integrating with Sage Intacct, which shows 15 days’ insight, we don’t need a week view in the calendar
Its Making Impact
Gathered over the course of 3 weeks.
87%
- Task Success Rate
91%
- Retention Rate
1:13
- Average Task Completion Time
by 73% and they want more
- Satisfaction