Despite the importance of design and engineering alignment, we still see organizations struggling to find it. Let’s say both teams just spent months bringing a new digital product to market. It’s live, but not after multiple delays and cost overruns. It’s viable, but customers are encountering hiccups. Deep down, everyone who contributed to the launch recognizes the significant technical debt that will have to be addressed.
What happened?
Somewhere along the line, design and engineering fell out of sync. Typically, there are three strong indicators of misalignment:
There’s no hidden magic to achieving cohesion between design and engineering. In this post, we’ll explore the tenets of alignment that we believe matter most. All of them are part of the formula that has helped us achieve a 90 NPS score in the digital design and engineering space.
At the organizational level, alignment fosters better performance. Consider this data point from a Global CEO Survey from PwC: “CEOs who scored in the top quartile of the [alignment] index were 1.76 times as likely as those in the bottom quartile to report outperforming competitors by at least 10%.”
That’s the holistic business benefit. In terms of digital product cycles, achieving seamless alignment between design and engineering teams leads to some more granular benefits:
Aligned teams work in tandem on prototyping and product iterations, avoiding many of the pitfalls that lead to delays. Vague design specifications that the engineering team then misinterprets, for example. The addition of unnecessary complexity by engineering. All of which could have been avoided if the teams weren’t so siloed.
Common wisdom holds that good UX is good for business. UX affects conversion rates, order value, and digital reputation. It affects the competitive advantage of digital products, too. You can imagine a group of B2B tech buyers watching a sales engineer struggle with bad UX during a live product demo. Odds are good that those buyers will discuss UX during their post-mortem chat.
UX is a direct byproduct of alignment between design and engineering. When organizations strive to create better alignment, they open new doors for UX improvements.
Sixty six percent of enterprise software projects encounter cost overruns. The usual suspects include scope creep, poor resource management, and (again) technical debt. Poor communication and risk management contribute to overruns, too, as do inadequate Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) processes.
On the other hand, greater internal alignment helps teams save money. Just ask BNSF Logistics: by ensuring the delivery of new features in a timely manner while contributing to the overall platform stability and performance improvements, the company achieved $500k in annual savings.
It’s frustrating to encounter blockers, lackluster collaboration, and communication issues. So it follows that better alignment leads to better morale—to happier, more productive teams. Just because design and engineering have competing interests doesn’t mean they have to compete to realize them.
The Scale from Spotify is a good example: though Spotify design and engineering work on separate tracks, they frequently intersect along their five phases of the product cycle. As a result, their teams have mutual understanding, stronger relationships, and a greater willingness to collaborate every step of the way.
The Scale is one of many methodologies for promoting design and engineering alignment. Yet none of these methodologies are possible without adherence to four core tenets:
Bring in key stakeholders from both teams early in the process. Facilitate product discovery workshops or collaborative sessions where designers and engineers can give their own perspectives. Create a space where all parties have a chance to understand each other's capabilities, constraints, and approaches.
Most importantly, implement practical means for extending this collaborative effort throughout the process. For example, you can use agile sprints to:
For instance, instead of the UI/UX team building a feature mockup on their own, conduct an agile design workshop in which design and engineering work together to develop a low-fidelity prototype that accounts for both UX considerations and technical feasibility. The goal here is to avoid wasted efforts, overlooked technical constraints, and delays.
Before beginning the work, design and engineering teams should establish a mutual understanding of what defines success for the project. What is the primary objective for this product? This approach reduces misunderstandings and inefficiencies.
When both teams are aware of the ultimate goal—building products that meet requirements while aligning with long-term product strategies—they can collaborate effectively to reach it. How do you create that shared vision?
More specifically, assess the degree of adoption by both teams. Even the best systems and processes fall short if they’re out of date, or if people don’t know how (or why) to use them. In teams with strong design and engineering alignment, we tend to find the following best practices in regular use:
Teams that collaborate are more engaged. A Gallup employee engagement analysis found that teams that are more engaged enjoy “10% higher customer loyalty/engagement; 23% higher profitability; and 18% higher productivity.”
What does this look like in practice, especially in product environments characterized by competing interests and goals? Here we find that doubling down on the basics can pay great dividends.
Why? Because the effort required to build complex products can draw focus away from the basics that make the effort successful. Those basics include team introductions and project kickoffs, two opportunities to establish a shared vision. They include collaborative sessions for wireframing and whiteboarding.
Many of the most successful teams we work with prioritize regular internal reviews to ensure continual alignment, refinement, validation. They’ve implemented iterative feedback loops throughout the development cycle. And most if not all place great importance on relationship building, routine check-ins, and a culture of open dialog.
Alignment doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s always influenced by external factors, such as new technologies, employment trends, and how our teams work.
By 2027, GenAI design tools will automate 70% of the design effort for new web and mobile apps. Data from Bain indicates that 25% of consumer goods companies “are now experimenting with AI-led design modeling and innovation.” At the very least, design and engineering teams will need to align around how to integrate these new capabilities into the overall product development process.
In the past year, nearly 95% of employers have encountered a skills shortage in the tech market. At the same time, the tech industry has undergone massive layoffs this year. With such uncertainty in the tech market, creating alignment is critical to engagement, productivity, and retention.
In its 2024 Global Workforce Report, Remote Global HR Research found that 73% of companies surveyed are increasing international hiring with a remote work policy. At the same time, companies like Amazon have made headlines for demanding that their workers return to the office five days a week. Many experts are forecasting the continued growth of hybrid work environments.
Remote and hybrid work setups introduce additional wrinkles that may complicate successful alignment. For best practices, read our blog Building Connection in Distributed Teams.
When left unaddressed, misalignment has a way of becoming entrenched. Everybody knows they need to address the delays, inadequate UX, and technical limitations, but can’t find consensus as to how. This is where a third party can be useful—an experienced team that understands how to diagnose and solve alignment issues, and support the in-house design and engineering teams for the time being.
Transcenda provides comprehensive product development services, fostering seamless collaboration between design and engineering teams to deliver exceptional results and world-class customer satisfaction. By supporting the in-house design and engineering teams we introduce proven best practices for team collaboration, helping organizations enhance efficiency and achieve their goals.
Explore our case studies for real-world examples of our impact, or contact us now to start a conversation about your next project.
