Microsoft Teams: Working Norms

We're harnessing the power of doing less to achieve more product success

By aligning on OKRs, building better relationships, and fearlessly prioritizing, the process that helped to empower Content Design is on its way to improve the way the entire Teams org works.

Where we started – a simple hypothesis

Creating shared expectations and agreements about how we work together as a team will help create a positive and productive team culture where everyone feels respected, valued, and supported. And also, we ship amazing products

Focus on the design cycle

The strategy includes

•Early involvement in planning

•Embedding content designers in feature teams

•Fearless prioritization, capacity, and ratio tracking

•Saying “no” to ensure we put the most important work first

Early involvement in planning

Creates awareness of OKRs & resources
Creates room for strategic design
Aligns team on goals, risks, & assumptions

Embedded Content Designers

CDs are product owners
Content-led design
CDs own their design decisions

Prioritization strategy

Priority criteria
Ratios & project size
Capacity & allocation

Capacity & ratio tracking

Proactive number game. Focus is not about individual CDs, but on the total amount of prioritized work and how many designers it will take.

Rollout and socialization

Real product change needs culture change.

Early socialization with Teams leadership and product partners.
Clear milestones and success metrics.
Achievable goals and promotions of wins across disciplines.
Feedback, iteration, and optimization

Where we're headed

Trust and partnership development across orgs and disciplines
Org-level initiative to integrate core working norms principles
Quality initiatives to align on craft and launch criteria
Integrated toolset to track priorities, initiatives and capacity

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