ABC Plants is developing a mobile app to help customers select and care for plants. The app will provide instructions on ideal environments for plants and caring for them. To ensure success, the company brought together engineers, designers, and PMs to collaborate through activities like kick-offs, user research, stakeholder interviews, and solution testing. This allowed them to build a shared understanding of business goals, users, and technical requirements to develop the right solution.

1. Adriana Nitescu, Alexandra Lung and Jessica Gantier
The magic of real collaboration
between Engineers, Designers
and PMs
DDD Europe 2023

2. ABC Plants is a well-established
company that sells a variety of
indoor and outdoor plants.
The company is planning to
provide its customers help to
select the best plants for their
homes and gardens.
GARDENING APP
CASE STUDY

3. BUSINESS GOALS
Increase customer satisfaction with a
better plant <> environment match
Position brand as trustful partners
Increase in store sales by addressing
to a larger type of customers

4. VALUE PROPOSITION
Help clients pick
the right plant and
take good care of it

5. ideal environment (soil type,
sunlight exposure…)
Key features
1
instruction to take care of the plant
(watering schedule, repot, cut or
spray leaves…)
2
Scanning QR code on a plant tag

6. Time for everyone to get started!

7. Hey!
Build this!

8. What can possibly go wrong?

9. Engineers don't have a clear alignment
on business stakes or product vision
Long
Delivery
Time

10. Lack of well defined boundaries
Guaranteed
Big Ball of
Mud

11. Engineers don't understand how their work
contributes to the success of the company

12. How many of you
have already experienced this?

13. Let’s talk about…
CROSS-DISCIPLINE
COLLABORATION

14. Top Collaboration Moments
User Research
Stakeholders Interviews
Kick-off
Ideation Workshops
Solution Testing
Event Storming Workshops & Stakeholders Interviews
Team Rituals
User Stories Slicing

15. KICK OFF
Collaboration Moments

16. THE MAGIC OF GETTING EVERYONE
IN THE SAME ROOM

17. KICK-OFF / INCEPTION
Everyone has a shared understanding of
the why and next steps !
Key stakeholders, PM, designer and
engineers
- Discuss Business, Product & Technical
goals
- Share current knowledge
- Define success criteria
- Identify risks, constraints key
dependencies

18. PROBLEM DISCOVERY

19. USER RESEARCH
Collaboration Moments

20. LEARNING GOALS
● Client’s decision making process
● Top blockers for picking up
confidently their plants
Give your input on learning goals !
● How they treat their plants at home
and what they struggle with

21. Plant care
● How do you take care of your plants ?
● What do you struggle most with when taking care of your
plants?
● Who is taking care of the plant at your house?
Buying experience
● Tell me about the last plant you bought, where was it ? Why
did you decide to shop for plants in the first place? Why did
you pick up that one in particular?
● Which store did you go to?
● How was your buying experience?
● What did you enjoy?
● What could have been better ?
● Where did you put it?
INTERVIEW GUIDE
Their profile
● How many plants do you own?
● What are your relationship with them?
● How old are they ? How many plants did not make it?
● What level of expertise in gardening do say you have?
● What's the most complex gardening act you've ever
done?
Buying decision
● What are you looking for in a plant ? What criteria do
you pay attention to?
● How do you actually decide which one you'll buy?
● Where do you get advice from?
● What would you discourage you from getting a plant?
Brainstorm on interview questions together!

22. Talk to the users
Join the interviews !
Observe what they do, notice the
vocabulary they use, empathise with
them

23. LEARNING RESULTS Share them with the whole team

24. BUILD SHARED UNDERSTANDING
Share one story about who your users are

25. STAKEHOLDERS INTERVIEWS
Collaboration Moments

26. - Talk to Gardeners, Managers and Store
Employees, Marketing, Customer Support…
- Understand how our business works
- Build up a common, rigorous language
between engineers, designers, product and
stakeholders
INTERVIEW GOALS
Shared understanding of the stakes !

27. - Learn from reference books and online
resources.
- Visit company website, infrastructures,
use their services.
- Immersion in expert’s daily routine,
practice « Live my life for a day ».
Acquire domain basic understanding !
Interview individual preparation

28. ABC Plants Gardener
● What are the key factors that plants require for
healthy growth?
● What happens if one of the factors is not meet?
● What do you mean by ideal soil type?
● What are some popular indoor plants well suited for
the beginners?
● What are key considerations for selecting plants
that are safe for households with pets or small
children?
● How do you develop a care plan for plants, and
what information should it include?
● What factors should be considered when
determining the appropriate watering schedule for a
plant?
Customer Support
INTERVIEW GUIDE Brainstorm on interview questions together!
Marketing
● What happens when a customer purchases a
plant?
● How the loyalty program works?
● How the customer is granted loyalty points?
● What happens when someone collects loyalty
points?
● What do you mean by enough loyalty points?
Store manager/employee
● How do you decide to build your stocks?
● What are your best sellers and why?
● What can you tell us about client's decision
process?

29. Talk to the key stakeholders
Run the interviews together !
- Ask questions about how things work
- Note the exact words they are using
- Do not introduce your own wording

30. Intercalate coding sessions with
stakeholders conversations !
What happens next ?
Pair together !
Share the information with everyone !

31. EVENT STORMING
Collaboration Moments

32. Collaborative exploration of the domain
stakeholders, product, designers and engineering

33. Conversations, Conversations, Conversations
Something relevant
that has happened
in the domain
Explore how ABC Plants organisation perceives its areas of activity and expertise

34. Build up a common and accurate language
For each term, capture its
exact meaning
in the conversation context.

35. Part of the system with key
requirements, Questions,
Unknowns, Problems, Risks, …
Attention Spots for Product
Important business rules, opportunities for future developments,
parts which require risk mitigation, …

36. Attention Spots for Designers
Designers spot user interaction moments
Decision made by people
Information needed to decide

37. Specific areas of the business flows Specific purposes => Independent models
BUILD UNIFIED MODEL(S)
Group events by responsibility
- How do you develop a care plan for plants, and
what information should it include?
- What factors should be considered when
determining the appropriate watering schedule
for a plant?
- What happens when a customer purchased a
plant?

38. Shared knowledge between
stakeholders, product, designers and
engineers !

39. SOLUTION FRAMING

40. Collaborative solutioning
Collaboration Moments

41. COLLABORATIVE SOLUTIONING
Collaborate on the solution definition!
- Diverse ideas and room for innovation
- Generates buy-in
- Tangible discussion on a visualisation of
your ideas.

43. Solution Testing
Collaboration Moments

44. SOLUTION TESTING
Sit in the room or get the results!
- Focus on the risky stuff
- Test for cheap and iterate
quickly

45. DEVELOPMENT PHASE
Collaboration Moments

46. Adapt collaboration with respect
of everyone’s way of working
Team rituals
Identify all opportunities to
collaborate:
- share product ideas,
- user interviews,
- co-design sketching sessions,
- slicing user stories, ...
Start with volunteers
Start on something with low stakes

47. User Stories Slicing
- Start small,
- Get user and business
feedback,
- Iterate with small steps
Pair together !
1 feature = multiple, small, independent user stories

48. Customer Language vs Server Language(s)
Use the learnings on the Customer Language from User Research !

49. Domain Model
Do what is good enough at the moment !
- Start small,
- Design and code by small steps,
along with the flow of user
stories

50. Adopt TDD !
TDD shows you where your design is wrong
without telling you what you need to do to fix
it. In most of the cases, DDD does.
Conversations should happen more than once
DDD TDD

51. The design
reference
What’s
implemented
Designers and engineers should always pair!

52. Effective Delivery
- The why is clear
- Shared knowledge of the solution and code
- Ownership is shared
- PM circles back on impact and learnings

53. Pair with your PM and designers
Join the interviews
Share one story
Do what is good enough at the moment
Share learnings within the whole team
It’s a Journey!

54. Thank you
Adriana Nitescu
Software
Engineer
Fractional CPO Design leader
Alexandra Lung Jessica Gantier