Case
Keeping a young design team growing through three reorganisations
DHI (water and environment engineering software) · Head of User Research & Design, 2019–2022
The situation
When I joined, DHI had a freshly created UX team working on complex, data-heavy engineering software. My mandate was to make design strategic, with a mostly junior team, inside a matrix organisation spread across countries. Then it got harder. Over three years, we went through three reorganisations and four different managers. We moved from the Digital Office, into the software team and finally into the Innovation Lab.
What I did
My job throughout this time was to keep the team steady, make sure the individual team members kept growing and keep design an important function. One of the first things I did was to map the team's skills. This information helped to shape our training, and helped me align expectations with leadership about what the team could deliver.
The team's skills map, 2019
Average experience across the team, 0 (none) to 5 (a lot)
Where we were strong
Where we had gaps
Over the next three years: – I hired and coached, and built a career and skills framework so people had a path to grow. – I kept motivation up with half-yearly success story boards, and team rituals that survived the Covid-19 lockdowns. – I ran workshops across Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Thailand and the US to align stakeholders and clients and push projects from ideas into outcomes.
The outcome
Through all of it, the team held together and kept growing. When I left, a senior designer from the team took over as manager, and later another team member stepped in to lead.