Cross Functional Leadership

Partnerships

Great UX outcomes depend on strong cross-functional partnership. My role as a UX Director is to align Product, Engineering, and Go-to-Market teams around shared goals—while ensuring user needs remain central throughout the lifecycle.

I focus on creating clear collaboration models, predictable touchpoints, and transparent communication, so teams move forward together rather than in parallel.

Product, Engineering & Go-to-Market

I’ve worked within a structured, collaborative workflow that balances clarity with iteration:

1. Product provides initial specifications
   Product defines the problem, business requirements, and constraints.

2. Design explores solutions
   The UX team translates requirements into flows, interactions, and visual direction.

3. Design reviews with Product and stakeholders
   Designs are presented for feedback, alignment, and iteration.

4. Iteration and refinement
   Feedback is incorporated through multiple design cycles as needed.

5. Handoff to Front-End Engineering
   Final designs are shared with clear documentation and implementation guidance.

6. Sprint review and demo
   After implementation, all parties review the work together to validate quality and alignment.

7. Go-to-Market alignment
   UX partners with Marketing to walk through new features, gather feedback, and support launch readiness.

This model ensures shared ownership, fewer surprises, and higher confidence at launch.

Conflict Resolution

Conflict is inevitable in cross-functional work—but unmanaged conflict creates risk.

My approach to resolution focuses on:

• Clarifying the underlying goal or constraint

• Separating opinion from evidence

• Reframing disagreements around user and business outcomes

• Creating space for respectful challenge

When tensions arise, I facilitate conversations that bring teams back to shared objectives and help move decisions forward without lingering friction.

Executive Communication

Clear, consistent communication builds trust at the leadership level.

I ensure visibility by:

• Providing UX status updates every sprint

• Sharing progress through brief presentations or structured Slack updates

• Framing updates around risks, decisions, and next steps—not just deliverables

Executives don’t need every detail—they need confidence that work is progressing thoughtfully and predictably.

Leadership-Level Decision-Making

When decisions carry broader organizational impact, I involve leadership directly.

Design seeks leadership input when:

• Tradeoffs affect scope, timeline, or experience quality

• Directional alignment is needed across teams

• Strategic priorities are being set or revisited

By inviting feedback early, design decisions are reinforced rather than challenged late in the process.

Artifacts & Alignment Tools

To support collaboration and alignment, I regularly use:

• Executive decks summarizing goals, progress, and decisions

• Strategy documents connecting UX direction to business objectives

• Alignment examples showing how teams reached consensus across functions

These artifacts reduce ambiguity and help teams stay aligned as work scales.

This Enables

• Fewer handoff issues and rework cycles

• Faster alignment across teams

• Stronger trust with Product, Engineering, and Marketing

• More confident launches

Cross-functional leadership is about creating clarity, maintaining momentum, and ensuring that decisions are informed, collaborative, and aligned to both users and the business.