typical lifecycle of a design team...

• First nobody knows who you are - what you do in the company. Owing to the nature of our job, no matter how much effort we make to gel, the UX team tends to stand apart in an otherwise engineering/dev oriented environment. So we become the ‘exotic’ team 
• Next, we need to ‘sensitize’ people about UX – what does it stand for, why is it important, the process etc. We conduct multiple info sessions, trainings etc to make people aware.
• So now more people know us to be the ‘exotic’ team – still not too sure why we exist.
• Then our managers scrounge around to get projects where we can work with just about anyone to make in-roads. Justify our existence, start the ball rolling…
• Next, some of us work on integrating the ‘User Centered Design’ process with the Software Development Lifecyle’
• We start working with some project teams, trying to adhere to the new process, during this, few project team members experience something new – they have not asked the questions we do; they don’t have answers to our questions; we are slowing them down…we are bringing in new dimensions…we are confusing them…they are losing focus
• Now, we become a ‘process bottleneck’
• Meanwhile, some bright project team members identify a unique skill we possess that none others do – the ability to make things look pretty. Because we happened to learn the concepts of alignment, gestalts law etc.
• Now we become ‘exotic menials’ (as described in Designful Company)
• We realize that in the bid to expand our reach, we need to work on things that do not deserve us. Things that go against basic principles of design.
• We continue on our quest to build relationships, increase visibility of our team, our competencies…selling our soul more and more…painting screens…making tons of prototypes, specifications that nobody reads/ recommendations nobody notices.
• By now we are frustrated…we start blaming our management…we realize that ‘design’ cannot work unless it comes top down.
• We still continue…we fight our battles to get access to end users…we show them our UI prototypes, gather their feedback…struggle our way to incorporate the findings…we celebrate…we just did ‘user centered design’ – we saw how our user looks like
• The management applauds on our achievements of being ‘user centered’ in the way we work.
• ‘Retail quality user experience’ is what we should strive for…yay!
• We continue to get end user reactions to our prototypes and believing we are doing user centered design.
• But we continue to look at the horizon and see the likes of Apple, and wonder, wow…”if only, I could work for them.” – Reflecting a sense of dissatisfaction with what we do and how the products we put our sweat and blood into turned out.

Most 'ground up' and 'grassroots' UX teams, across companies, geographies come this far, following a somewhat similar path - from the day they hire their first 'exotic menial' to the time they are caught in the rut at the 'production' level.

According to me, this stage is a crucial one in terms of 'management' of a design/UX team. It is at this stage that:

• the team begins to loose its original members that loyally made the journey so far. they begin considering other options:
• newer jobs
• newer roles within the company
• self employment
• higher education
• sabbaticals
• the lack of anything to look forward to, result in these original team members get into the 'status quo' mode - loose the passion they once had and are reduced to appreciating their job for the salary and other perks.
• meanwhile there are possibly new starry eyed recruits. being new, they have somethings to look forward to, are learning...but are not in the system long enough to identify and bring about improvements. besides, they do not find any role models/ leaders that inspire them to do so. The system killed the passion within its leaders.

 So, why do I consider this so crucial?  

•  'Because, at this juncture, we stop questioning status quo. In the light of continous improvement and innovation, this is a disaster.'
• I believe, this is the make or break situation for a UX like team in a largely engineering set up. Not increasing our value proposition will eventually lead to redundancy.
• The 'attrition' within the team is shunned of to be a normal phenomenon - lack of reflection on why erstwhile loyal members choose to leave. When core issues are not fixed, the cycle repeats itself. 

Thoughts:
Some of my key learning over the years are:

• 'Design leadership' in a non-conducive environment, needs a lot of guts, imagination and curiosity.
• While we focus on building relationships and establishing ourselves, an important parallel task is to keep a dialog, discussion and design literacy process running for the management cadre.

While we concentrate on building relationships, at a juncture like this, I believe it is worthwhile to get involved in some 'constructive confrontation' with 'management' in order to:

• Share the power of our 'imagination' that can be translated to concrete proposals for leveraging the team for increased value. Unless being led by the likes of Steve Jobs, often senior management members do not know how best to leverage a design team. We need to demand this. We need to set some aspirational, inspirational goals.
• Better align ourselves with organizational priorities

Having a good understanding of these, will help us identify opportunities of maximum impact and value.
 
Ultimately, As Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, has said, “Success is all about impact. Designers get turned off if their ideas don’t make it out into the world.” An elegant and thoughtful design solution is only a success if it has real resonance and value to human beings.