Product Strategy

Tl;dr

Project Overview

Following the successful rollout of a major HR software implementation, a significant portion of the project budget remained unallocated. This created an opportunity to further explore cost‑saving strategies within workforce management, particularly at the store level.

To capitalise on this opportunity, I was asked to design and facilitate a senior leadership workshop with four client senior leadership and two senior EY leaders. The central question guiding the session was:

“How might we improve workforce management strategies to more efficiently manage in‑store workforce costs?”

The four‑hour workshop resulted in three viable draft business cases. One concept was selected for further development and progressed by myself and a manager into a fully defined engagement. This work became a $1.8m project, focused on the design and build of a workforce wage cost management dashboard that enabled more granular benchmarking and tracking of wage cost performance than previously available.

The Challenge

Although some workforce management data was already being distributed to stores, it was rarely used in practice. Key issues included:

Fragmented ownership of workforce data across the organisation
Inconsistent data quality and accuracy
Poor accessibility and lack of user‑friendly presentation

These challenges led to mixed reactions from key stakeholders whose buy‑in was critical to the success of any new solution. Addressing these concerns early was essential to building confidence in the proposed dashboard and ensuring long‑term adoption.

My Role

As a project support team member during the discovery phase, I contributed across strategy, design, and delivery. My responsibilities included:

Supporting a cross‑functional discovery team focused on workforce management and wage cost drivers
Designing low‑fidelity data dashboard concepts aligned to Google Cloud Platform patterns
Designing and facilitating workshops with senior technical and non‑technical stakeholders to gather business requirements
Synthesising qualitative feedback into actionable insights
Establishing Confluence and Jira to support structured project management
Preparing SteerCo reports for senior leadership

These contributions helped establish a clear set of business requirements, a shared understanding of feasibility, and early dashboard concepts that received positive stakeholder feedback.

(Opportunity to enhance: specify the size and disciplines of the cross‑functional team.)

Discovery & Research

An early discovery insight was that leadership assumptions about data readiness did not always reflect operational reality. While strategic intent was strong, there were gaps in understanding around:

Data availability
Data quality
Existing infrastructure capabilities
Alignment across teams responsible for workforce data

Addressing these gaps quickly was critical to grounding the project in reality. This was achieved by engaging directly with those closest to the data through targeted workshops and stakeholder interviews.

Personas & Early Design Exploration

With approval to proceed based on initial qualitative research, four key user personas were defined to represent the different stakeholder groups who would interact with the dashboard. Each persona captured distinct goals, motivations, and decision‑making needs.

Rather than relying on abstract descriptions, the team adopted a “show, not tell” approach. I designed low‑fidelity dashboard concepts using Google Cloud Platform design patterns to help stakeholders visualise what the dashboards could look like and how they might be used in practice.

(Image placeholder: Persona summaries)
(Image placeholder: Low‑fidelity dashboard concepts)

Workshops & Requirement Definition

To deepen understanding and validate feasibility, I designed and facilitated three structured workshops:

Technical capability workshops with 14 senior technical stakeholders to understand current data systems and constraints
Business discovery workshops with 25 participants from across the organisation to identify:
- What data was currently collected
- What data users wanted access to
- Which metrics would genuinely be used to manage workforce costs

Insights from these sessions directly informed:

A clearly defined set of business requirements
A structured project management framework
Further refinement of dashboard concepts

These outputs formed the foundation for the build phase and supported widespread adoption once deployed.

(Opportunity to enhance: include a simple workshop agenda or output example.)

Outcomes

The discovery and strategy phase resulted in:

Three viable workforce management business cases
One fully developed concept progressing to a $1.8m engagement
Clear alignment between leadership ambition and technical reality
Early dashboard designs validated by both technical and business stakeholders

The resulting workforce wage cost dashboard enabled more granular benchmarking and supported more informed decision‑making at the all levels in the business.

Key Learnings

The Importance of Discovery

Leadership often has strong strategic ideas that are not always grounded in operational reality. Early discovery helped surface constraints around data quality, infrastructure, and alignment—allowing the project to be shaped realistically from the outset.

Effective Workshop Facilitation

Designing and facilitating multiple high‑stakes workshops highlighted several best practices:

Avoid overloading sessions and allow flexibility in delivery
Keep discussions focused and be confident in redirecting conversations
Ensure all outputs are clearly documented, both verbally and in writing

Bridging Technical and Non‑Technical Perspectives

Coming from a non‑technical background, I initially found technical discussions challenging. Over time, I learned that my value lay not in mastering technical detail, but in understanding just enough to translate complexity for non‑technical stakeholders. This capability proved particularly valuable when preparing SteerCo updates and aligning senior leadership every two weeks.