What activities do you do to help set expectations between development and upper leadership?

Question

DJ Chung · Accepted Answer

For a visible project that has the attention of upper leadership, I think of 3 checkpoints with leadership:

1. Showcasing the vision at the beginning of the project

Once I have nailed down the problem to solve, why it's important to solve, how it contributes to broader business goals, and you have an idea of how you want to solve it i.e. conceptual mocks - I present the vision for the project to get alignment with upper leaderships. While I'm getting this ready, I will make sure to keep my manager and other key stakeholders in the loop to get their feedback and refine the vision.

2. Reviewing detailed designs that we plan to implement

Once I get feedback from the vision, we incorporate them into the designs that we plan to implement. Once we feel confident in the designs that we want to implement, we do another review to make sure leaderships understands at some level of detail what will actually ship and when.

3. Weekly updates on project progress

Once we're aligned on the detailed designs and start building, we send out weekly updates on our progress. This allows leadership to chime in if clarification is needed.

Note: If at any point there's a major change in the product direction because of new information, I make sure to communicate up to leadership and schedule a meeting if needed.

4. Feature has shipped and measuring impact

I make sure to communicate timelines on when the feature will ship and when it shipps, I make sure to emphsiaze in our update that the feature has gone out the door and is in the hands of users. Also, I try to follow up a few weeks or a month later with metrics that show the impact of the feature.

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