For many product and marketing leaders, UX projects are high on the list of priorities.

Teams invest serious dollars in these initiatives, but sometimes, the projects don’t yield the outcomes leaders originally envisioned.

Why does this happen, and how can you prevent it from happening to you?

We find that one of the big predictors of success on a UX project is how it begins. Teams often hesitate to make time for one of the most important steps: planning and alignment.

As you plan for your UX initiatives, improve the project’s odds of success with these foundational steps:

• Identifying the team, and reserve adequate time. Account for all the tasks and responsibilities that will make up the project, and be sure everyone’s clear on their role and has the capacity to fulfill it.

  • Read: Assembling the Right Team for a Website Redesign

• Establishing communication standards. We use Slack, email, and regular meetings to keep things moving. Communicating in "public" places (like team-wide Slack channels) helps teammates self-serve later if they have questions about what happened.

• Creating a plan. Even a loose one will help. What are the activities, and what purpose does each activity serve? At what points are sponsors consulted? You can de-risk your plan by including only the most fundamental activities, performed at a brisk pace. Done is better than perfect, and team collaboration is better than big reveals moments.

  • More about those pesky 'tah-dah' moments in UX.

• Most importantly, making time and space to align as a team. Each stakeholder and contributor has their own hopes, insights, and ideas for the project. These disparate visions can be key sources of friction downstream. In remote work sessions, we bring the project team together to whiteboard their knowledge and ideas virtually. We capture:

  • Users: Who are they? What do you know about them? What do they need? What is their current experience? What do they expect?

  • Vision: What is your long-term vision for the experience? Why?

  • Questions: What do we not know yet? What assumptions do we need to check? What information do we need to gather?

If you’re planning a new or improved user experience, book a consultation. We’ve been helping clients like you for nearly a decade, and we’ve seen it all. Our team can help you avoid the pitfalls every step of the way.