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Product design with the team of teams
CrossLead is a consulting services and software firm, that uses technology to augment the client service practice and offers a SaaS web application. The organization is lead by former Navy Seal David Silverman, who is the co-writer of the NY Times bestselling book Team of Teams. Based on this methodology: CrossLead helps clients restructure their organization, optimize business practices through strategic planning, align company vision to execution, and foster better decision making amongst complex environments.
I led product design in research, ideation, user experience, user interface, prototyping, visual design, and implementation. This includes enhancing legacy products, creating new products with services team, and evolving the SaaS application. I worked alongside a product lead, 2 product managers, design contractors, and 10 developers.
Value innovation: the platform allows team leads to build plans with actionable projects that have measurable results
Optimize for shipping
CrossLead decided to make a bet and invest in a new business endeavor to build out a SaaS web application. This is where I came in as their first full time designer to lead product design. On a tight budget: ruthless prioritization and immediate shipping was our focus. Here are the immediate actions I started upon joining the team:
Partnered with engineers on finding a design framework aligned with our tech stack (react and ruby); we chose ant design. The design system strategy outline: we ship with this framework and layer in styling as we ship. This optimized for shipping and allowed us to build the design system and react UI library foundation on the go.
Simultaneously, collaborated with the PMs and CEO to establish the immediate priorities to focus on and what not to focus on. I talked with the wider team: sales, customer success, marketing, and finance to understand the business model and bottom line: why are customers paying us money? Who are our customers? What do they love about us? What are the challenges they are experiencing? Additionally, I met directly with customers to learn about their engagement feedback and joined consultants in their workshops.
Based on my findings: of the many features and migration needs (from the legacy tools built), we identified the most unique product differentiation was the “single page view”. This concept is the core of the consulting service and tranlated to the SaaS tool: helping customers understand their organization's performance, structure, and planning.
Plan creation 
Network map tool is used to visualize org survey results 
Visualization of org survey results, displaying key influencers in a data set vote, by segment
Learn and grow
My time as CrossLead was an incredibly informative experience. To start: we built an application and design system from scratch. Our initial features shipped were not pretty and had a lot of bubble gum and duct tape glueing them together. However we evolved by: thinking big, executing our hypothesis, and embracing uncertainty. These factors resulted in fast decision making, continual feedback, and growth. I learned by doing that the greatest competitive advantage is continual measured risk-taking and experimentation: shipping ideas to real life volatility. This optimized the team to think in terms of return on risk, which makes failure successful because you learn from your mistakes and move on. One small step at a time, we were able to build out a more cohesive, usable, and valuable tool for our customers.
I'll never forget on my last night, the team took me out and the CEO said to me: “fair winds and following seas”, a traditional Navy salute to departing members. A shared sentiment of team gratitude.