Karen Pascoe: Great question. How I’ve been using
external agencies is going to continue to morph over time, and I’ll
probably settle it when I’m at somewhere between the two and three year
mark, as the team gets closer to critical mass and scale.
When I started, I had no team. My first hire came onboard close to six
months after I did, as I was getting acclimated. My onboarding process
was long, and they wanted it to be long. They wanted me to get to
understand the company, and the business, and the various operating
divisions, and how they worked.
And get really networked, and get networked globally. At the beginning,
I was using vendors because I didn’t have a team, and the agency needed
to be my team. It’s starting to shift where, in some cases, I’ve got
discrete projects, and then I’ve got agencies that are all ready under
the procurement process.
Because we’re a big company. We work with them. I’ve got some great
partners on that front. That’s helpful, but what I’m finding I want to
move into, and some of our partners are more comfortable with this, and
some of our partners are less comfortable with this is, we’re going
Agile.
That’s it, Lean UX and Agile, a combination of that, so if I’m driving
strategically what our experiences are and how they’re coming together, I
really want people who can work on a co-create basis with us, out of
our studio.
They don’t need to be there five days a week. They can have some time
in their own nest, and that’s OK, but given that, I really want vendors
who are local, that work with us in New York City, which we’ve got a
great capability there, but also who can work with us in a Lean and
Agile fashion.
The agency business hasn’t quite read Jeff Gothelf’s book, or really
taken it to heart, and they’re still in the deliverables business. I’m
in the outcomes business. I don’t need big reports. I don’t need funky
little deliverables. I don’t really want to pay for them.
I want outcomes that I’m delivering for my customers, and I really want
partners who can work with me on that. We’re at this inflection point
of companies, like MasterCard, in it to win it, and really building
these internal teams, and that’s not going to stop.
The nature of how we work with our partners who have valued skills, and
capacity, and things to bring to the table that are really important,
how’s that arrangement going to evolve over time?
http://uxablog.uie.com/posts/ux-advantage-infusing-mastercard-with-ux