Inclusive Teams, Better Products

NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / February 2, 2023 / It is common in the tech industry for teams to work in silos, only coming together at the end of a sprint to hand off final deliverables. This over-the-wall approach fails to take advantage of the diverse skills on the team and negatively impacts outcomes. Active collaboration allows the team to share knowledge, skills, and expertise as well as to identify and solve problems together. It also helps ensure that all team members are aligned on the product vision and goals, and that the final product meets the needs of all users.

Foto: Accesswire

At SAP, we are committed to creating inclusive products that all people love to use for work. This requires active collaboration and communication among user researchers, designers, engineers, and product managers throughout the entire design and development process. I want to share some of the ways we have transformed how our teams work to inspire others to do the same.

Here are four simple things that your teams can do today to improve the user experience for all and create a culture of inclusion.

Adopt an Inclusive Approach to How Teams Work Together from the Very Beginning

To ensure everyone on the team gains a holistic understanding of the needs and motivations of the people they are creating products for, we need to get everyone involved right from the start. This means enabling user researchers, designers, engineers, and product managers to work together throughout the end-to-end process. It also means that each member of the team will be involved in the research itself.

At SAP, we are committed to making inclusive research part of our everyday practice. For this to happen, user researchers take a participatory approach to the research itself - and intentionally include people from different cultural backgrounds, regions of the world, with a range of disabilities, working environments, and more. This has proven to be a game changer for our teams and has led to some surprising and impactful insights. Involving the core team in the research process also makes it possible for engineers to quickly build and test prototypes to ensure they function as intended, and for product managers to prioritize and integrate features into the final product.