Change Management
Our student assessment product was in trouble.
Renewals were dropping, and the sales pipeline had stalled. When I joined this product, the culprit wasn't just the software—there were systemic failings in how the team functioned.
Scope creep was rampant, communication was fragmented, and there was a deep-seated distrust of the design process. The team was inefficient and stuck in a cycle of friction that was showing up in the declining revenue.
Discovery
I let the team tell me their stories.
I didn't lead with solutions. I asked questions to uncover the specific friction points preventing delivery.
The feedback was a map of a broken system:
Product felt Design was a bottleneck that ignored business timelines, market urgency, and acceptance criteria.
Engineering felt blindsided by late UX reviews and designs that didn't align with technical requirements.
Design felt isolated, operating without leadership or a clear connection to the broader Product strategy.
Acceptance Criteria Problem
Shifting the Mental Model
I realized that we couldn't improve the product until we stabilized the human infrastructure behind it. I focused on stripping away the administrative anxiety that was stalling the sprint cycles.
Lowering the Stakes with Low-Fi: I shifted the team to a Low-Fi First model. By sharing rough work early, we avoided the “Big Reveal” that led to late-stage friction and wasted engineering hours.
Decentralizing Authority: I delegated UX reviews back to the individual designers. This removed the leadership bottleneck and allowed Engineering to get the feedback they needed in real-time.
Strategy as a Shield: I worked with leadership to define a hard product strategy. This gave the team the permission to say no to scope-creep, reducing the mental load on designers who were previously trying to solve every problem at once.
Solutions
I implemented tactical quick wins to give the team the breathing room they needed for a long-term strategic shift.
Synchronized Grooming: We aligned the Design and Engineering grooming cycles, ensuring that technical feasibility was baked into the requirements from day one.
Transparency as a Standard: We opened the communication lines, moving high-stakes discussions out of closed rooms and into shared, transparent forums where everyone had a seat at the table.
Results
The shift was felt immediately. We stopped missing deadlines, and for the first time in several quarters, the retrospective feedback turned positive. We improved the team dynamic and restored the operational velocity required to stabilize sales/retention.
By resolving these internal fractures, we cleared the path for our 2025 strategy—a roadmap focused on cross-product integrations that requires the very collaboration we just worked to rebuild. We moved from a state of crisis intervention to a state of strategic growth.