Why Designers Should Work in an Ad Hoc Networked Teams
A small component from your new UI is not in a design system. And you just had a conversation with product developers how they love your idea, but there is little time left. Asking design system manager to prioritise this component won’t help, as their backlog is already overwhelmingly full and they will never deliver it on time. What to do? Drop the idea now and leave it for a brighter future that never comes? Well, not really. Simply create an ad hoc networked team.
Ad hoc stands here for created or done for a particular purpose and networked for consisting of cross-functional experts.
As complexity in organisations grows while product releases accelerate, trust me, no manager in their clear mind wants to micromanage the work. On the contrary, as hierarchies are getting more horizontal, managers’ role transforms from senior experts to facilitators and supporters. You and your colleagues are senior experts now. Hence the solution is to bring everyone you need for this particular task together to implement this new component and then disband. Below are few tips.
Create a new chat. Invite a product developer who loved your idea, so they will take the component into use once it is ready. Ask a visual designer and a frontend developer from design system team to join, so that the former will finalise the design and add it to a UI kit while the latter implement the code. And get to work. You may also create a ticket to track the progress and let the design system manager know about your small project, who, I am sure, will be super happy to hear that the design system is improving without them being directly involved.
Once the component is in a design system and implemented in the latest product release, acknowledge the work done by your ad hoc networked team colleagues, and close the chat.
