IBM Security

Scaling Success: Building a centralized resource hub for the growing IBM Security Design team

As one of the early members of the growing Security design team, I witnessed the design team’s exponential growth. Starting with only ~30 designers at the time of my joining, we expanded to nearly 150 designers. The need for a centralized resource hub became crucial to efficiently onboard new team members and educate existing ones.

In support of the DesignOps Lead, I played a key role in launching and maintaining the IBM Security Design site. I designed the team page as an exemplary template, iterated on the implementation process, and documented team deliverables, processes, and domain education for both new and existing team members.

Product

IBM Security Software Design (internal site)

Team

DesignOps, Engineers

Role

I worked with the DesignOps Lead to design the team page as an SME.

Timeline

2022 Q2-Q3

Context

Exponential team growth

Security design team is growing exponentially. Onboarding new team members is months long journey for the new hires as well as existing team members. Resources that the new security designers need to do their jobs were scattered among 330+ GitHub pages and countless Box Notes. Without consolidated resources, we could expect onboarding to take 6+ months.

The aim was to transition new hire's from onboarding to product deployment 30% faster.

Approach

Iterate. Iterate. Iterate.

When tasked to build the first team page on the site, I applied the product design process by:

Gathering Requirements: Gathered requirements to structure content and information architecture effectively.
Prototyping in Figma: Created prototypes in Figma to visualize the site layout and design.
Built the Live Site: Utilized the micro-editor and markup language to build the live site based on the prototypes.
Gathering User Feedback: Collected feedback from new team members to refine the onboarding site experience.
Establishing Process: Established and tested the process to share with other design squads, enabling them to implement and build their team pages efficiently.

This refined process ensured a systematic approach to designing and building the team pages, resulting in a user-friendly and cohesive onboarding experience.

Outcome

The Evolution of the Security Design Team Site

The Security Design Team site has transformed the onboarding experience for new hires. By consolidating resources and providing a user-friendly platform, we have significantly reduced onboarding time and improved team efficiency. As our team continues to grow, this site will play a crucial role in ensuring a seamless transition for new members and facilitating collaboration among existing ones. The site brings several key features:

Centralized Repository: All Security teams share one GitHub repository.
Easy Navigation: Gatsby theme enables intuitive navigation.
Direct Updates: Micro-site Editor allows for real-time updates.
Consolidated Resources: Streamlined access to resources, making information easier to find.
Replacement of Existing Onboarding Site: Will replace the current Security Onboarding GitHub tickets for improved efficiency.