CASE STUDY
Using Visual Process Mapping to Reduce Team to Stakeholder Misalignment
This case study offers an in-depth look at just one of the many key initiatives I led on the Software Practices Leadership Team within the Defense Innovation Unit. For a broader overview of my role and responsibilities with this effort, please refer to Transformed Defense Software Development Through Product Design Leadership or review my resume
Designing in Sensitive Domains: certain details are classified which has lead to some generalizations and gaps with what is shared.
Challenge
Help Soldier Product Designers and Product Managers increase solution alignment with stakeholders, allowing for a more empathy for the users and direct influence on the strategy and execution of the product.
Solution
Collaborate across the team to create user process diagrams to show user actions, pain points, technical backend operations and timeline. They would learn these tools through various channels, like facilitated workshops and blog posts, to apply to their everyday product work.
Impact
The Soldier Product Designers and Product Managers increased trust in their proposed solution and buy-in from their stakeholders, gained confidence in their role, increased empathy for customers and awareness of mission improvement opportunities. Additionally, product leadership within the Defense Innovation Unit saw a positive difference in their approach. In turn, the mission of their product is meeting its goals.
Why Stakeholders Couldn't See the Problem
Stakeholders and cross-functional team members lacked a clear understanding of what problems teams were solving and why. We observed disorganized FigJam boards and inconsistent research artifacts.
Pattern: Teams Lacked User Process Flows
We observed that teams were not consistently using user process diagrams—a foundational part of user-centered design—to communicate the users, systems, and pain points behind their product decisions.
This gap led to:
Fragmented understanding of the problem space across design, engineering, and product
Misaligned expectations with stakeholders and senior leadership
Missed opportunities for targeted critique and support
Long arduous discovery processes
-1.png)
Hypothesis
We believed that by teaching teams to create visual diagrams, they would be able to more clearly articulate the problems they were solving and the solutions they were proposing
Our Solution: Practical Hands On Education and Accessible Resources to create a variety of process maps
We created a lightweight structured initiative to build process diagramming into the culture and workflows of product teams.
3 part workshop
Our weekly design education time was restructured to include:
Instructional sessions on how to build and choose process diagrams
Dedicated time to apply them to active product work
Workshop Goal:
Product managers and product designers feel comfortable with 3 different process diagrams and introduce using one to their team to prioritize problems and make informed decision.s
Brief Agenda:
Introduce 3 commonly used but varied process diagrams
Set up groups by teams, so they can work with their PD and PM together
Ask them to bring their current process map if they have one
Identify what is known and unknown
Develop a research plan
Developed Figjam resource
From the workshop we created, we used the figjam template to share out and continue to support learning and practice. A shared visual resource with templates for three key process diagrams:
User Journeys: we selected this because it’s helping to visualize journeys, as they are narrative and descriptive. We observed team’s poorly telling the story of the problem space, or not at all. So we wanted to give a tangible resource to help tell a better story
User Flows: we selected this to accompany the user journeys so team’s could break out a typical or ideal set of steps needed to accomplish a common task. This would help team’s get clarification on specific steps versus vagueness which we were observing a lot in presentations.
Service Blueprint: we selected this to ensure there was a bridge for product folks to work more closely with engineers specifically because of the front state and back stage actions, this requires teams to work through technically what is going on lead to bridging product needs with technical feasibility.
embedded consultant coaching
Design leadership embedded consultants into product teams to encourage the use of diagrams during planning and review moments, offering pairing sessions and async feedback.
How We Measured Success
Quantitative
Tracked the number of teams including process maps in product reviews
Baseline: 0 teams → After 3 months: 7 teams (~55% increase)
Qualitative
Conducted exploratory interviews with product leaders and stakeholders
Key outcomes:
Greater clarity in product reviews
Increased cross-functional alignment
Stakeholders felt better prepared to support or challenge decisions
Outcomes & Impact
This initiative led to a measurable cultural shift in how product teams communicated problems and solutions. By teaching teams how to visualize systems and pain points clearly, we:
Enabled faster alignment between teams and leadership
Improved the quality of feedback in reviews
Created shared mental models that empowered better decision-making