What Developers Could Learn from Talking to the Design Team

When I started this journey I didn’t know much about the design process at Atomic. The interest stemmed from wanting to see the bigger picture. At my first kickoff, I was amazed to see the design team shine at facilitating activities to pull information from our clients. Then, before I knew it, there were mockups and stories in the backlog. I wanted to get more involved in that process.

To achieve this, I decided to have lunch with some designers in Ann Arbor. I had some questions I wanted answered. How do we go from kick-off to sprintable work? What’s the process of gathering business requirements and turning those into mockups? How do we gather abundant information, analyze the data, and turn it into a product backbone? What even is a product backbone? Here, I explain what I was hoping to accomplish on my journey to answer these questions, my key takeaway, and how devs can utilize this information.

As much as I love code-crushing, I wanted to branch out and work on becoming a better consultant. After the accelerator program, my next goal is to become a tech lead. This means upping my consulting game. I wanted to demystify the process. How do designers and leads go from kickoff to sprintable stories? The first step is to identify what information is needed or missing and understand how to gather that information from the client. To know what information is needed, we need an understanding of the client’s goals, the organization, and the product we plan to deliver. Once we have this, we can brainstorm the possible risks and how to mitigate them.

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