Engagement 03 · Senior capacity

Embedded Senior Product Design

Give an initiative that has no senior owner one, inside your team rather than beside it, for a defined stretch that ends in a shipped thing or a clean handover.

Start with a few sentences
Best for
An initiative that matters, is funded, and is moving sideways because nobody senior owns its design
Typical length
Three to six months, two to four days a week, priced as reserved weekly capacity
Your team’s involvement
Your standups, your tools, your cadence, and one sponsor who owns what done means
You leave with
The initiative shipped or handed over, the decisions documented, and patterns your team can extend

The situation

There is an initiative that matters, and it needs someone senior to own the design of it end to end. Hiring for it takes months you do not have, and it may not be a permanent role once this is done. Meanwhile it moves sideways: funded, staffed with engineers, and waiting on decisions nobody is placed to make.

Where it has worked

One stretch where a senior owner inside the team was the turn. Every figure is from the case study it sits beside.

Nutrition Incentive Hub · USDA-backed, eight months

Grantees spent more time chasing paperwork than running their programs.

The network ran on old software, spreadsheets and workarounds, and no two of them agreed. For eight months I was the lead product designer inside that effort, from the interviews through the information architecture to one portal and reporting platform that replaced all of it, with a documented design system built in from the start. The component library went to the developers ready to use, so the clarity outlasted the launch.

  • ~10 hrsto process a data request, down from 45 to 55 hrs
  • ~2×the grantees served, without adding analysts

That is this engagement at full length: one senior owner, inside the team for a defined stretch, leaving behind something the team could extend without calling me.

The Nutrition Incentive Hub on a laptop and a phone: the program-finder site and a transactions-by-firm chart.
The full account, with the screens →

Before you decide anything

Not sure this is the one? Start with a few sentences.

Tell me about the initiative and where it has stalled, in your own words: what it is meant to ship, who is on it, which decisions are waiting on someone who is not there. No deck, no call to book. I will read it and tell you plainly whether this engagement fits, and if it does not, what would.

Describe what is happening

or write to adam@adamhickey.com

Someone at a desk writing a short note by hand.

How it works, step by step

Four steps, each with something to show for it. The example under each one is drawn from the same example company, so the four add up to one story: a healthcare provider whose scheduling initiative was funded six months ago and has moved sideways since, because nobody senior owns the design of it.

  1. Agree the initiative and what done means

    One initiative, with a written definition of finished. Embedded work that starts without this becomes general capacity, and general capacity is how a defined stretch turns into an open-ended one.

    e.g.Done, on one page. The scheduler replaces the phone tree for three clinics, and nothing else.

    Adam and the sponsor across a small table, his pen on one line of a single sheet, one box drawn on the whiteboard behind them.

  2. Join the rhythm you already have

    Your standups, your tools, your review cadence. No parallel process beside your team, and no handover meeting between me and the people building it.

    e.g.No meeting invented for my benefit. Their standups, their board, their release train.

    A laptop showing a six-tile video standup, one teammate mid-sentence, Adam in the bottom-right tile with a coffee.

  3. Own the design work end to end

    Research through to the built thing, including the unglamorous middle: the states, the edge cases, the pull-request comments. Ownership means the parts nobody volunteers for.

    e.g.The states nobody volunteers for. The double-booked slot, the clinic that closes early, the patient who cancels twice.

    A tablet on a stand showing the clinic scheduler: a full week of appointment blocks with one overlap marked in sage, a column of patient cards, and a printed list of edge cases with checkboxes beside it.

  4. Leave it maintainable

    Documented decisions, patterns your team can extend, and a deliberate handover. The measure of this engagement is what happens in the three months after it ends.

    e.g.Two of their designers can extend it without calling me. The handover started in the first month, not the last week.

    Two of the team's designers at their monitors, one pointing at a component and explaining it to the other, with Adam on a laptop video call at the end of the desk.

What it asks of you

  • One sponsor who owns what done means and can say no to what is not it
  • A seat in your standups, your tools, and your repository, from the first week
  • Engineers who will take design in pull requests and conversations, not handoffs
  • A named person to hand over to, agreed at the start rather than found at the end

When another engagement fits

Questions people ask

How long does Embedded Senior Product Design last?
Three to six months, at two to four days a week, with an end date agreed at the start. It ends in a shipped thing or a clean handover.
How is it priced?
As reserved weekly capacity, with an end date: the days you reserve are the days you get, and the fee is for keeping them open. Write to adam@adamhickey.com to start that conversation.
Who is it for?
An initiative that matters, is funded, and is moving sideways because nobody senior owns the design of it.
Is this a hire?
No. It is a defined stretch inside your team, not a permanent role, and it is built to end: the measure of it is what your team can do in the three months after it is over.
What does the team need to give?
One sponsor who owns what done means and can say no to what is not it, a seat in your standups, tools and repository from the first week, engineers who will take design in pull requests and conversations rather than handoffs, and a named person to hand over to, agreed at the start.
What do we leave with?
The initiative shipped or handed over, the decisions documented, and patterns your team can extend.

How I work

The person in your standups is the person doing the design, with no account layer between them and you. A one-person practice runs few engagements at once, so the days you reserve are the days you get, and the stretch has an end date. The handover starts in the first month, not the last week, because the measure of the work is what your team can do without me.

This is not the fit when the initiative already has a senior owner and needs more hands beside them, or when the work has no end. If you will still need the role filled next year, that is a hire, and I would rather say so than bill for the wait.

Start here

A few sentences about the initiative and where it has stalled are enough to start. If a different engagement fits better, or none of them do, I will say so.

If the number that comes back is more than you have, say so. There is usually a smaller version, two days a week rather than four, or a shorter stretch, and it is a different engagement rather than this one discounted.

Describe what is happening

or write to adam@adamhickey.com

Next engagement · 04 Working Product Prototype → Ideas everywhere, nothing you can use yet