I have been doing some thinking about how design decisions get made, both at my company and at others. For the most part, we have a hybrid (somewhat centralized, somewhat not) authority for making design decisions: there is one team responsible for them all, but the team members are assigned to other cross-functional teams.
I've been doing some brainstorming about whether it would be appropriate to have a much more decentralized decision authority for design decisions. I have reasons for exploring whether a decentralized decision authority makes sense. It seems like a decentralized authority comes hand-in-hand with other aspects of an organic organizational structure. An organic structure gives things like increased collaboration, more adaptable duties, low formalization of processes, and increased communication in multiple directions (e.g. not just down the organization chart). (I got this information from Stephen Robbins' "Organizational Behavior" ... a great book.) I'm interested in an organic structure because Robbins argues that such a structure is more conducive to supporting a strategy of innovation and for dealing with non-routine, ill-defined work, which in my experience, defines design work well. If you made it this far, I have some questions I hope you can help with: If you've worked in an organization that decentralized design decisions, what worked well and what didn't? What did you (or your organization do) to make the organic structure successful? What challenges did you face in the organic structure, and what did you do to manage those challenges? Thanks! Alan ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
