How to Pass Salesforce Strategy Designer Certification Exam

Last Updated on September 10, 2023 by Rakesh Gupta

Strategy design plays a crucial role in how a business achieves its goals. Strategy design helps you to transform your strategic vision and objectives into feasible implementation phases via design thinking methods.

Any design strategy should address the following:

Existing problems and ongoing challenges
Current benefits and successes to be leveraged
Unmet client/customer needs
Changing client/customer behaviors and attitudes
Emerging ideas and trends
Opportunities to differentiate

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So, Who is an Ideal Candidate for the exam?

Salesforce Certified Strategy Designer candidates create value by aligning an organization around and directing the design of systems-level solutions toward desired business and user outcomes. Candidates should be able to focus on what is important, not urgent, and deliver results through a combination of tangible and intangible/relational work.

Salesforce Certified Strategy Designer skills span business, innovation, design, and delivery. Additionally, they can lead, make, and advocate across innovation and product life cycles. Strategy designer skills and experience enable them to bridge multiple disciplines required for successful strategic, design, and delivery work. A Salesforce Certified Strategy Designer can leverage a team’s capabilities, fill in gaps, and know when to call in an expert. The Salesforce Certified Strategy Designer has a detailed understanding of business and user goals and the ability to connect people across organizations with empathy.

The Salesforce Certified Strategy Designer certification exam is for individuals who want to demonstrate their knowledge, skills, and experience in the following areas:

Guiding discovery, research, and design efforts to create a common vision and direction for a product;
Facilitating the creation of customer journeys from inception to completion;
Aligning business needs with the end-user experience of a Salesforce product or service;
Advocating for design quality and vision alignment within a solution recommendation Identifying and framing problems (e.g., from business problems to the user/human problems);
Applying design thinking methodology;
Leading prioritization and focus of design efforts and implementation;
Leveraging other roles and knowing when to consult with experts in adjacent skills such as visual identity, business, and technology;
Aligning stakeholders around a vision; presenting ideas simply, bringing creative problem solving to resolve objections, and persuading critics.

How to prepare for the exam?

Learning styles differ widely – so there is no magic formula that one can follow to clear an exam. The best practice is to study for a few hours daily – rain or shine! Below are some details about the exam and study materials:

60 multiple-choice/multiple-select questions – 105 mins
70% is the passing score
The exam Fee is $200 plus applicable taxes
Exam Sections and Weighting

There are tons of resources to help you prepare for the certified strategy designer certification exam.

The following list is not exhaustive; so check it out and use it as a starting point:

What you Need to Know to Smoothen your Journey

On a very high level, you have to understand the following topics to clear the exam. All credit goes to the Salesforce Trailhead team; I have taken content from there.

Value Design: 32%

Challenges are a normal part of life. But when it comes to the design strategy process, a challenge means something very specific. A challenge is a problem you’re trying to solve that considers the users of what you’re creating—specifically in how they think, feel, and act.
While challenge framing is about inspiring solutioning, the scoping process is the logistical plan for how the project will be structured. Scoping should be intentionally designed to allow for both discovery and exploration. Scoping allows you to plan, organize, and manage the time, people, and other resources needed to solve the framed challenge. It outlines the work to be done, how it will be completed and by whom, and the expected outcomes.
Key elements to scope the process
1. Understand the need
2. Articulate the opportunity for design
3. Establish the problem-solving approach
4. Create a project plan
5. Identify measures of success and potential risks
A How Might We (HMW) statement turns your challenge framing into a question that can be solved. It turns problems into opportunities for generative thinking and organizes how you think about the problem and possible solutions. It starts with a call to action, and in moments of ambiguity, it guides you in how to push your design.
Tips to craft a successful HMW statement
1. Write down your problem statement
2. Draft your design challenge using the phrase “How Might We.
3. Test the design challenge
4. Refine the problem and impact
5. Try again
Use these questions to help you assess the HMW’s effectiveness.
1. Is it generative?
2. Is it accessible?
3. Is it too narrow?
4. Is it too broad?
5. Does it contain a desired outcome?
Key moments when teams need most support
1. Kickoff
2. Research moments
3. Synthesis moments
4. Review moments
Importance of defining success in challenge framing and scoping
1. Connect to goals
2. Break down business goals into implications for design
3. Collect feedback that helps you evaluate your work through the lens of business impact
4. Draft your future metrics
Common methods for evaluating success
1. Business Success
  1. Growth targets
  2. Expansion targets
  3. Efficiency targets
  4. Customer satisfaction targets
2. Customer Success
  1. Net promoter score (NPS)
  2. Customer retention rate
  3. Lifetime value
3. Societal Success
One of the best ways to develop attainable goals is the SMARTE framework.
1. SMARTE stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound, and Ethical.The SMARTE framework can help ensure the vision you’re delivering hits your goals.
Research enables you to take advantage of expert perspectives and build confidence that you’re solving the right problems, and solving the problems right.
Different types of research for strategy design
1. Research for Discovery/Understanding
2. Research for Inspiration/Idea Generation
3. Research for Exploration/Refining an Idea
4. Research for Validating Assumptions, Decisions, and Designs
5. Ongoing Assessment and Customer Listening
Choose quantitative methods for questions that sound like, “How many…?”, “How much…?”, “What do most people…?”, or “What is the success rate of…?”
Choose qualitative methods for questions like, “Why…?”, “What would be ideal…?”, “How does it feel to…?”, or “What’s wrong with….?” And for qualitative methods, the follow-up question to ask yourselves is who is best suited to provide the answers you seek.
Seven key methods for external primary research
1. Interviews
2. Observations or shadowing
3. Group conversations with stimulus
4. Diary/journal studies
5. Co-design/participatory design sessions
6. Surveys
7. Analogous research

Research goals and research methodologies

For Discovery/Understanding	For Inspiration/Idea Generation	For Exploration/Refining an Idea
Interviews Observations or shadowing Diary/journal studies Surveys	Group conversations with stimulus Diary/journal studies Codesign/participatory design sessions Analogous research	Group conversations with stimulus Codesign/participatory design sessions

Best practices for design research ethics
1. Be Honest
2. Ask Permission to Record
3. Stay Lean
4. Limit Access to Identifiable Data
5. Observe Regulations
6. Respect Participants’ Expertise
7. Pay Participants Fairly
8. Listen Without Leading or Advising
9. Take Only What You Need
10. Ensure Representation
11. Seek Support If You Have Ethical Questions
What is an Insight?
1. Insights form the basis for strategy design, unlocking opportunities for innovation and leading to ideas that are meaningful to people, creating real value.
A job story might look like
1. When I’m <Situation>
2. I need an <Motivation>
3. So I can <Expected Outcome>
A walking deck is a short summary of your latest work, no more than 10 slides long, written in a way that both informs and persuades others about your project’s progress.
Best practices for planning an insights workshop
1. Create an agenda that leaves plenty of room for discussion
2. Bring the research insights to life
3. Create a set of boards for shared viewing
4. Set a time and place
Best practices for facilitating an insights workshop
1. Remember to pause
2. Ask open-ended questions
3. Listen to your stakeholders
4. Allow participants to challenge and build on the ideas you’re presenting
5. Know what’s next
Ideation is the process of generating ideas and solutions through sessions such as Sketching, Prototyping, Brainstorming, Brain-writing, Worst Possible Idea, and a wealth of other ideation techniques.
Who to Invite to a Brainstorm
1. The ideal size for a group of people brainstorming is no smaller than 3 and no bigger than 10. Create your list with a few things in mind. Invite:
  1. People who know your users
  2. Generative people
  3. A mix of optimists and realists
Brainstorming rules
1. Encourage Wild Ideas
2. Go for Quantity
3. Be Visual
4. Build on the Ideas of Others
5. Stay Focused on the Topic
6. One Conversation at a Time
Dot voting is a method of group voting used to identify a team’s preferences from a list of options. In other words, it’s a quick and easy decision-making process for narrowing down options, prioritizing ideas, and figuring out the most popular choices.
1. So how exactly do you conduct a dot voting session? Here are the basics:
  1. Generate ideas or list a set of alternatives
  2. Organize the options into groups or clusters based on theme or type, as needed
  3. Clarify voting constraints
  4. Vote
  5. Assess the outcome
  6. Revote as needed
What is a Journey Map?
1. Sometimes a Journey Map is used to analyze an existing process and diagnose issues with it, but design teams also use journey maps to describe a future state experience.
Asynchronous Ideation
1. Sometimes a meeting in real-time won’t work out, due to scheduling or issues with group dynamics. In that case, you can run an asynchronous ideation session using Slack, a digital collaboration tool like Figjam, or even a Google Slides deck.
Co-creation is when a design or product team invites people outside the core team into the ideation process.
Common mistakes in group Ideation
1. Deferrals to Leadership
2. Grouping by Perspective
3. GroupThink
4. Dominant Personality Bias
5. Distractions
Analyze each solution concept based on:
1. Desirability: Think of this as what’s valuable to the user.
2. Viability: Think of this as what’s valuable to the business.
3. Feasibility: This of this as what’s technically possible.
Consequence Scanning is a way for organizations to consider the potential consequences of their product or service on people, communities, and the planet. Consequence Scanning is a process teams use to interrogate solution concepts to consider their potential effects by asking three key questions.
1. What are the intended and unintended consequences of this product or service feature?
2. Within these intended and unintended consequences, which are positive?
3. Within these intended and unintended consequences, which are negative?
A strategic vision is an aspirational view of a future state and a point of view on what teams should build to solve the project’s design challenge.
What Is Prototyping?
1. A prototype is a first pass, a simple sketch of an idea you want to implement. It doesn’t have to be pretty. It’s not completely thought out. It’s not final.
Prototypes can be used in three ways.
1. Ideation: To generate ideas and provide stimulus for others to build on.
2. Exploration: To try different ways of doing something or challenge assumptions.
3. Validation: To confirm that a design solves a problem well and is usable.
Examples of low-fidelity prototype formats
1. Sketches
2. Paper interfaces
3. Building block prototypes
4. Borrowing and recombining
5. Live action + Survey
6. Role-playing
Examples of medium-fidelity prototype formats
1. Wireframes
2. Mockups
3. Splash pages
4. Foam or 3D-printed models
5. Interactive prototypes
Different types of feedback to collect
1. Verbal feedback
2. Behavior cues
3. Implications
Best practices for packaging prototype findings
1. Create a one-page executive summary
2. Give analytical and emotional highlights
3. Make the document tell the story
4. Keep it lean
Four common types of product roadmaps
1. Portfolio roadmap: Shows the planned releases of multiple products in a single view
2. Strategy roadmap: Displays the team initiatives needed to achieve the product goals
3. Releases roadmap: Shows the activities (what needs to be done, when, and who is responsible) that must happen before you can bring the release to market
4. Features roadmap: Shows the timeline for delivering new features
Alignment – Bringing an idea to market is never done in a vacuum. It almost always involves a large number of stakeholders. The goal is to align the team, leadership, and organization around what you’re creating.
Key stakeholders involved in bringing an idea to market
1. The product manager is accountable for getting a product to market that achieves business outcomes. The product manager is accountable for the roadmap.
2. Developers and architects identify dependencies, define what’s possible, and determine how to deliver the product.
3. UX designers and researchers ensure that user outcomes are identified and achieved, and that the solution is desirable to customers.
4. Data and analytics stakeholders determine how to measure performance and define the data strategy.
5. Project management makes sure all the parties involved complete their tasks and ensures that the entire process stays on track.
6. Leadership sets strategic direction, identifies redundancies across the portfolio, and prioritizes resources.
7. And don’t forget other product teams like Product teams like Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service. In an organization with many projects, often serving the same customer, it’s important for everyone to share what they’re working on and understand the business, user, and technical synergies and conflicts.
Best practices for creating alignment with key stakeholders
1. Know your audience
2. Start early
3. Orient around outcomes
4. Get them involved
5. Create clarity
6. Anticipate objections
If a product makes it to market, the first iteration probably won’t be perfect. To even get your product in the hands of your customers, you need a go-to-market (GTM) strategy.
What Is a Go-to-Market Strategy?
1. The product roadmap laid out the journey for your target customer and the business and customer outcomes you’re trying to achieve. But the product isn’t going to sell itself. A go-to-market strategy stretches beyond the product roadmap with an end-goal of achieving a competitive advantage. It’s a strategy that outlines how you’ll:
  1. Successfully launch your product to your target audience.
  2. Acquire new customers.
  3. Drive awareness, adoption, and engagement.
Key trade-off consideration during the deployment
1. Effort vs. value
2. Time vs. cost
3. Compromise vs. sacrifice
4. Clarity vs. consistency
5. Aesthetics vs. usability
Design debt results from all the good design concepts or solutions that were set aside to achieve short-term goals. In other words, the decisions you made yesterday impact today and can hold you back
1. Symptoms of design debt include:
  1. Slow growth
  2. Reduced adoption and customer satisfaction
  3. Low team velocity
  4. Difficulties in accommodating new features
Benefits of Alignment
1. Focus the project team’s efforts on what matters most.
2. Drive outcomes more directly.
3. Improve communication and teamwork.
4. Improve efficiency, since people can act more independently in service of the common goals.
5. Reduce the possibility of friction and stray from intent, especially at handoffs.
6. Enable everyone to contribute their expertise in a way that supports the vision.
7. Increase team satisfaction because members believe in what they’re doing and can see that others value it.
8. Increase accountability, because when everyone shares goals, we can hold each other accountable.
What’s at risk without Alignment
1. Wasting time and energy on the wrong ideas and tasks.
2. Inconclusive outcomes because success isn’t well defined, you can never achieve clear success.
3. Discord between stakeholders, which sometimes becomes discord between teams.
4. The need to do re-work, including the need for additional investments in time and resources at a minimum.
5. Resistance and lack of trust in the project team and in design overall.
6. A lack of understanding of the importance and value of the work and the solution vision.
7. Project failure or premature ending due to a lack of support or resources.
8. Low morale among employees who can’t point to successful contributions to the organization or feel misaligned with company values.
Decision making and prioritization methods
1. Dot Voting
2. Decision Checklist
3. Criteria Scorecard
4. Prioritization Matrices
5. Trade-Off Scales
Best practices to help groups resolve friction and come to alignment on a plan they can support
1. Get Curious
2. Get to the Heart of the Objection
3. Go Back to the Last Aligned Moment
4. Name the Challenges
5. Acknowledge the Value of Perspectives
6. Explore Solutions Genuinely
7. Invite Collaborative Problem-Solving
8. Bring in Fresh Inspiration
9. Pause, Then Revisit
The poor results can be attributed to one or more of these reasons
1. Inadequate change management
2. Lack of C-level sponsorship
3. Talent deficits
The V2MOM lets you clarify what you’re doing and then communicate it to the entire company. It boils down to these five questions, which create a framework for alignment and leadership:
1. 1. Vision — what do you want to achieve?
  2. Values — what’s important to you?
  3. Methods — how do you get it?
  4. Obstacles — what is preventing you from being successful?
  5. Measures — how do you know you have it?
Jobs to Be Done, or JTBD for short, is a framework designed to help us define success from a customer perspective. It starts with a deeper inquiry that seeks to answer a simple question: What jobs are customers hiring your product or service to do for them? JTBD empowers you to focus on the outcomes that people using your product want. It’s a great way to stand in the users’ shoes.
Jobs to Be Done principles
1. Customer-centric
2. Solution Agnostic
3. Stable Over Time
4. Measurable Outcomes
What is a Journey Map?
1. Journey maps are documents that visually illustrate the experiences customers have with a business or an organization. A journey map identifies several things.
Below are a few benefits of Journey Mapping
1. Better team alignment
2. Strategic thinking
3. Deeper understanding of customer pain points
4. Increased empathy
5. A guide to measuring impact
6. A strong case for innovation
Who to Invite to the Journey Mapping Workshop
1. People who know your customer – salespeople, researchers, customer support people, and so on.
2. People who are generative – people you know who like coming up with new ideas and have an easy time brainstorming.
3. People who are optimists and realists – people who know what’s possible and who don’t default to “no” or think of all the reasons why an idea won’t work.
4. People who bring diversity – people from different cultures, backgrounds, and disciplines.
Understanding the Architecture of a Journey Map is very important. Below are components of a journey map
1. Phase
2. Actions
3. Thoughts
4. Feelings
5. Touchpoints
6. Context
7. Opportunities
Prepare a journey mapping workshop
1. Virtual Workshop Logistics
  1. Plan four sessions, 2 hours each. In virtual sessions, it’s more challenging to keep people engaged for an extended period.
  2. Prompt participants to do more preparation work ahead of time to make the most of the collaboration time.
  3. Use a virtual white-boarding tool the team can use to brainstorm together.
  4. If you have time and money in your budget, send participants a care package with a few treats as a special token of appreciation.
2. In-Person Workshop Logistics
  1. Plan for an entire day of collaboration.
  2. Reserve a quiet place where participants can collaborate without distractions. This may mean finding a place outside your office space.
  3. Arrange the furniture in a way that allows for easy collaboration and discussion. Try to avoid classroom-style rows!
  4. Find a space with natural lighting to create a warm environment.
  5. Provide healthy snacks and beverages throughout the day.
  6. If you have money in your budget, give participants something special as a token of appreciation.
  7. Plan to have plenty of multi-colored sticky notes, markers, foam core boards, voting dots, and colored tape to create grids.
When designing with intention, be sure to
1. Scan for consequences
2. Think of all stakeholders, not just shareholders
Businesses that embody the four relationship design mindsets in their work are able to foster strong relationships through the experiences they deliver to customers. These mindsets underpin all the relationship design work. For best results, combine:
1. Compassion
2. Intention
3. Reciprocity
4. Courage
Phases of the design process
1. Discover
2. Define
3. Design
4. Deliver
5. Deploy
Principles of great UX design
1. Clarity
2. Efficiency
3. Consistency
4. Beauty
A persona is a fictional character based on real, aggregated data that represents a group of users based on shared behavior, motivations, goals, pain points, or other characteristics. Think of a persona as a composite of a certain type of user who’s important to your work.
Consequence Scanning helps mitigate
1. Imbalance in the Benefits of Technology
2. Unforeseen Issues
3. Erosion of Trust
4. Impact on the Environment
5. Changes in Norms and Behaviors
6. Displacement and Societal Shifts
Four principles of accessibility
1. Perceivable – Users must be able to perceive the information being presented. The information cannot be invisible to all of a user’s senses
2. Operable – Users must be able to operate the interface. The interface cannot require interaction that a user cannot perform
3. Understandable – Users must be able to understand the information and the operation of the user interface. The content or operation cannot be beyond the user’s understanding
4. Robust – Users must be able to access the content using a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies.

Tools and Artifacts: 23%

Make sure to complete the following module in your developer org

Path & Workspaces
1. A path gives reps a visual representation of the stages required for working through a sales process. The paths you create for your sales teams can include:
  1. Key fields that reps complete before moving to the next stage in the sales process
  2. Best practices
  3. Words of encouragement to keep your reps pumped
  4. Links to relevant Chatter posts
  5. Policy reminders
  6. Even potential gotchas
API-Led Integration for Business Reinvention
1. Connectivity is the cornerstone of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. And not your ordinary everyday Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connectivity, but a higher fidelity level of connectivity made possible by application programming interfaces (APIs).
2. Five Key Attributes of API-Led Connectivity
  1. Connectivity-in-context
  2. Repeatable
  3. Purpose-built
  4. Scalable
  5. Reciprocal

Field Service Basics

Field Service is used for Coordinating field operations—including scheduling service appointments, dispatching mobile workers and equipment, and tracking vehicle locations, product stock, and appointment status

Field Service users

Role	Description
Administrator	Sets up field service features according to their unique business needs. Set up includes installing the Field Service managed package and Field Service mobile app.
Agent	Takes customer service calls and requests field service appointments via work orders, which list the skills and parts that are needed.
Dispatcher	Assigns and manages the service appointments. The dispatcher console included in the managed package helps dispatchers schedule, optimize, and dispatch service appointments from one screen.
Mobile Worker or Technician	Manages their service appointments. Their tasks include closing work orders, tracking the parts they used, and providing service reports.

Field Service has three main parts that work together to give you a complete field service management solution.
1. Core Field Service features including Service and Dispatcher Consoles
2. Scheduling and optimization from a managed package
3. A mobile app for your mobile workforce

Field Service core features

Feature	Description
Service Territories	Regions where field service work is performed
Operating Hours	Times when field service work can be performed for service territories, service resources, and customer accounts. Operating hours are made up of time slots: a time period within a day when field service work can be completed.
Service Resources	Mobile employees who can perform field service work
Service Crews	Teams of service resources that are assigned to service appointments as a unit.
Skills	Skills required to perform field service tasks
Time Sheets	Tools to track the time your field service employees are spending on tasks
Work Types	Templates for common field service work, such as cable installations or furnace repairs
Work Orders	Requests for field service work
Service Appointments	Appointments for field service work
Maintenance Plans	Plans that help you track preventive maintenance work using auto-generated work orders
Product Items	Parts for services that can be requested, required, transferred, and consumed in field service work
Product Requests	Requests for a part or parts
Product Transfers	Transfers of inventory between locations.
Return Orders	Records of inventory returns or repairs.
Service Report Templates	Templates for customer-facing reports summarizing the status of service appointment and work orders

Experience Cloud Basics
1. Experience Cloud can be used to
  1. Create multiple experiences for specific needs.
  2. Extend business processes to partners and customers.
  3. Integrate data (such as orders or financial information) from third-party providers.
  4. Use themes and templates to create beautiful branded experiences.
  5. Use Salesforce CMS to create content and deliver it to any channel.
2. Typical use cases for a self-service portal
  1. Gives customers one place to find information about your company and products
  2. Provides customers access to their data (accounts, service tickets, bills, and so on)
  3. Lets customers share experiences and expertise with other customers
3. Typical use cases for a partner portal
  1. Streamlined onboarding
  2. Marketing campaigns and funds
  3. Qualified leads
  4. Deal registration
  5. Opportunity management
  6. Easy and quick quoting
Different types of UX Mapping Methods:
1. Empathy mapping: Empathy maps help team members understand the user’s mindset.
2. Customer journey mapping: Customer journey maps focus on a specific customer’s interaction with a product or service
3. Experience mapping: Experience maps generalize the concept of customer-journey maps across user types and products.
4. Service blueprinting: Service blueprints are counterparts to customer journey maps, focused on the employees.
  Image Credit – NNGroup
Three-Step Decision Framework
1. Current (as-is) vs. future (to-be)
  1. Current mappings are based on an actual “today” state of what you are mapping.
  2. Future mappings are based on an “ideal” state for a user type, experience, or a to-be service structure.
2. Hypothesis vs. research
  1. Hypothesis mappings are based on an accumulation of existing understanding within a team or organization.
  2. Research mapping is based on data gathered specifically for building the map.
3. Low-fidelity vs. high-fidelity
  - Low-fidelity maps are unpolished and often created with sticky notes in a flexible, unrefined manner.
  - High-fidelity maps are polished, created digitally, and look final.

Intangible Deliverables: 26%
1. Differentiate Between Sympathy and Empathy
  1. Sympathy – A sympathetic response can include emotion, but it’s focused on keeping distance, makes a judgment about the person or how they should react, and doesn’t take the other person’s perspective into account.
  2. Empathy – An empathetic response recognizes the other person’s perspective and emotions, communicates these back to them, and withholds judgment.
2. Work can be organized into three categories.
  1. Tasks
  2. Coordination and communication activities
  3. Organizational activities
3. Guidelines for developing positive, healthy relationships at work:
  1. Accept and celebrate a diverse workplace.
  2. Develop active listening skills.
  3. Expand other communication skills.
  4. Take time to support those you lead.
  5. Manage technology and anticipate its impact.
  6. Share your wisdom and invite the wisdom of others.
  7. Develop honesty and trust.
4. A remote presentation reaches for maximum engagement when it is:
  1. Clear. Craft a message that your audience can understand.
  2. Concise. Say as much as you can in as few words as possible.
  3. Credible. Build trust to gain a customer.
  4. Compelling. Create an experience that draws in your audience.
5. Good body language enhances your speaking voice. When you present:
  1. Stand or sit forward in an engaged posture with your weight balanced and your feet flat on the floor.
  2. Use gestures to add emphasis and to help get rid of any nervous energy.
6. An executive summary is a brief summary of your project plan. Make sure to include the most important and relevant details of your project plan. Reserve the data analysis and more involved details and charts to the project plan itself. Instead, focus on a summary of the project plan. It should look something like the following:
  1. Includes a one- to two-sentence descriptive summary of the overall plan.
  2. Identifies the problem.
  3. Explains your solution.
  4. Identifies who needs to act and what they need to do.
7. General considerations when creating your presentation
  1. Focus on the Flow
  2. Have a Single End Goal
  3. Include Relevant Statistics
  4. Present Data So It Gets Attention
  5. Focus on Slide Design
8. General considerations when presenting to executives
  1. Practice, Practice, Practice
  2. Get Your Timing Right
  3. Project Confidence
  4. Expect the Unexpected
9. The Ladder Canvas has three sections
  1. Face the ladder
  2. Assess each level
  3. Repair the steps
    Image Credit – fearlessculture.design
10. Collaborative Sketching Is a Powerful UX Tool
  1. UX professionals know that getting stakeholders and team members outside of UX involved in collaborative sketching activities such as design charettes or design-studio workshops can be highly beneficial. Participation in UX-led sketching sessions can result in:
    1. Increased buy-in for design decisions
    2. Diversity of ideas, due to participants’ various perspectives and roles
    3. Shared ownership of next-step design outputs
    4. Increased speed and efficiency in the design process
    5. UX exposure for people outside the UX field
Leveraging Adjacent Roles/Skills: 19%
1. A program roadmap is a high level, strategic artifact, therefore, it should communicate where investments are being made and how you are directing your team’s efforts to achieve a goal that is aligned to the overall corporate objectives. Communication of your program roadmap is an opportunity to gain sponsorship, collaboration, and alignment from cross-displinary teams.
2. Types of product Roadmap:
  1. An internal product roadmap communicates the effort and activities required to get your product ready for the market. This internal artifact is especially useful to coordinate across your engineering, marketing, sales, and support teams.
  2. A public product roadmap communicates the timeline when you will deliver the features to your customers. Architects and other stakeholders will use this information to plan their implementations and buying decisions.
3. Steps to create a roadmap
  1. Collaborate closely with each of the dependent teams identified in your roadmap.
  2. Start with phased approach then address foundational items early – especially if these foundational actions are required to enable future, more transformational phases.
  3. Refer to your capability gap analysis for a list of all required changes. Place these items in your roadmap in a logical sequence identifying dependencies and any other critical path elements.
  4. Identify a roadmap hypothesis – Low hanging fruit first, BHAG first, self-funding etc. Then, maintaining the sequence/order, place each item from 3 in one of the phases by aligning with the business value impact.
  5. Remember to think big, start small, move fast!
4. Behavioral economics is a discipline examining how emotional, social and other factors affect human decision-making, which is not always rational. As users do not always have stable preferences or act in their best interests, designers can guide their decisions via strategic choice architecture—e.g., pricing structure.
5. Understand Process Mapping
  1. Process mapping creates visual representations of business processes. It includes any activity that defines what a business does, who is responsible for what, how standard business processes are completed, and how success is measured.
6. Benefits of Process Mapping
  1. Make understanding and communicating the process much easier among teams, stakeholders, or customers.
  2. Help identify flaws in the process and where improvements should be made.
7. UPN stands for Universal Process Notation and it is the simplest way of mapping business processes visually. By creating simple flows and diagrams, everyone in the company can understand how different aspects of the business works.
8. Principles of UPN
  1. No more than 8-10 activity boxes on a screen
  2. Drill down from an activity box to a lower level to describe the detail
  3. Attach supporting information to an activity box
  4. View and edit controlled by access rights
  5. Version control and history of changes at a diagram level
9. Other Process Diagrams
  1. Capability Model – Capability models or industry blueprints list out the high level process areas. These are useful for scoping out the specific area that you are mapping and to show the context within the overall business.
  2. Detailed Process Map – A detailed process map is a flowchart that shows a drill-down version of a process that contains all the details of each step of the process and any subsequent steps along the way.
  3. SIPOC – SIPOC stands for Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs and Customers. SIPOC is a process mapping and improvement method that summarizes the inputs and outputs of one or more processes using a SIPOC diagram.
  4. Value Stream Map – A value stream map is used to visualize the flow of material and information that is needed to bring a product to the customer.
10. Tips to identify business process mapping tools and software
  1. Drag-and-drop interface
  2. Formatting capabilities
  3. Security and versioning
  4. Publishing and sharing capabilities
  5. Intuitive design
11. Business process mapping steps
  1. Identify the process you need to map
  2. Create a winning team
  3. Gather all necessary information
  4. Develop the process map
  5. Analyze the process map
  6. Develop new, better steps
  7. Manage the process
12. Best Practices of Process Mapping
  1. Apply business process mapping to the right types of processes
  2. Be clear about the focus of your process mapping
  3. Get someone skilled to map your processes
  4. Validate your maps.
  5. Don’t fix your processes until they are fully mapped
  6. Build the right team
  7. Keep it simple
  8. Work with your stakeholders.
13. Why Business Analysis skills are important
  1. Business analysis increases Salesforce adoption
  2. Business analysis reduces rework
  3. Business analysis impacts architecture
  4. Business analysis increases agility and drives digital transformation