Onboarding to the Platform

Developer Onboarding, Fall 2022 - Ongoing

 
 

Challenge

Align cross-divisional leadership on the desired internal developer experience and the business & technology required to deliver it.

Many teams working on internal enterprise systems have not engaged with designers and often misunderstand how to leverage the value of XD, particularly when there is “no UI”. By introducing the Blueprinting approach, all teams and stakeholders have a common framework and language to rely upon for collaboration.

 

Experience Design Lead and Design Manager, responsible for framing platform developer journeys, envisioning the desired future state, documenting personas, corresponding job stories and leading continuous interventions to improve the current fractured experience.

Blueprinting is scoped as a multi-year initiative to sustain alignment on what, for whom, and why teams are building what they are building.

Since research data has persistently revealed Platform Onboarding as one of the biggest pain points for internal developers, the Blueprinting effort is framed around this question, “How might we design platform onboarding as one coehesive experience?”

My Role & Approach


- 1 big-picture blueprint defining the problem space within the larger internal developer experience
- 25+ mini drill-down blueprints capturing key platform workflows and dependencies for platform onboarding
- Internal developer personas, job stories and insights
- 1 future state service prototype to communicate design intent

ARTIFACTS

 

Results

- Blueprinting has become part of the lexicon
- Identified key strategic decisions-to-be-made and compiled into asks for annual strategic planning
- Blueprints have illuminated internal conflict around incompatible software architecture systems models at play in different Autodesk divisions that is blocking future state
- Sustained alignment for heavy investment in off-the-shelf and open source tools, but dependent one consistent systems model
- Moving from Onboarding vision into tactical roadmap asks;  Single UI with Backstage.io, API layer powered by UCP/Crossplane, and all other systems talking to each other through the API layer​ based upon the systems model.