Introduction
We worked with Work.Life to take their already successful business to the next level through multiple projects across, design, development & product management. We undertook a re-brand, which we used to revamp & optimise the Work.Life marketing website. Product management consultancy was then used to streamline complex internal processes through intelligent integrations with external tools, as well as the building of a platform that supported all their booking services. A truly holistic project that showcases how tech can enable businesses to meet their wider goals.
Product development velocity increased X 6
Improved Product Quality
Implemented Agile Product Development Process
The Client
Work.Life provide workspace experiences for freelancers and small companies across the UK. Started on the belief that everyone should feel happy in their work life, their portfolio of co-working spaces across the UK are designed to create personal workspace experiences that promote happiness and engagement.
Before Deazy
Thanks to exciting growth in the past few years Work.Life had expanded rapidly, but not without its product infrastructure undergoing some growing pains. A collection of white-label solutions served them when they had just one or two offices but struggled to support the company’s rapid growth.
“We didn’t have any structure with building new products. The processes were separate and there were different developers working on different projects in silos,” says Emma Walker, Membership Marketing Manager.
What Work.Life needed was a digital product portfolio that helped them reach big visions of where they wanted to go. CEO Elliott Gold says, “We had no clear process for product development and a cluster of digital products that were not well integrated. We weren’t ready for a full-time product manager and there was no internal resource dedicated to developing our own products.”
Work.Life, meet Deazy…
After some initial conversations with Andy, our co-founder and CEO, Deazy was brought in to put some pow-wow into the product management process and a beautiful partnership was born. Here’s a knockdown of the work we’ve done together:
Reviewed Work.Life’s existing digital landscape and transformed it into a cohesive and interconnected digital product portfolio.
Developed a product roadmap in line with Work.Life’s strategic ambitions
Introduced product management and prioritisation processes that support Work.Life’s visions.
Implemented an agile approach to product development to increase the pace of design and development. Hello regular feature sets.
Researched specifications for and worked with developers to manage the build of new products (including mobile and web apps for new workspace product for larger businesses, ‘Yours’).
Working with Deazy – Q&A
We asked Emma Walker, Membership Marketing Manager and product lead at Work.Life, some questions on working with Deazy and the benefit of bringing an external company to provide product management as a service.
Q: What were the benefits of bringing in Deazy to support the product management process?
Emma: Deazy helped us to build much better products that wouldn’t have been as great if we did it ourselves.
They pushed us to think on a more elevated level. They started by getting to know our strategic goals and reviewing our existing digital product landscape to put in place a solid product management process that supported our overall business strategy and product vision.
There was also the flexibility to scale up the team and add on more services when we needed it to speed up product development. Deazy introduced experienced designers to design and test new feature ideas before proceeding to development and introduced dedicated QA / manual testing resource for additional testing rigour before releasing new products or feature-sets.
Q: What were the benefits of bringing in Deazy to support the product management process?
Emma: The processes have massively helped us as a company to use our time better, freed up resources internally and increased productivity of work. We’ve accelerated pace from developing one product in-house in six months to delivering six products in the same time period.
Gone are the mad moments of panic, with ideas floating around and not really taking off. A solid product management process means everyone involved in developing our products understands what they’re doing and what they’re delivering against. The result is a team that feels more ownership over our products and gets more done!
Take the task of prioritising in product development. This used to be decided by culture and organisational structure. Deazy motivated us to question why we should build something and make prioritisation decisions based on user and business needs. It freed us up to build products that made our customers happier and more engaged.
Q: What does a product launch look like now?
Emma: We can launch it and leave it! After previous launches we’ve had to stick bits on we hadn’t thought about in the first place. Much more thinking and research now happens before the product spec gets to the developer or designer. We now focus our resources and time on launching a minimally viable product and getting the all-important feedback from our members for feature development.
Another big change is our designers and developers are brought into the process earlier to share their thoughts and develop ideas rather than being handed a spec and being left to develop them.
“Hiring Deazy on a Product Management as a Service basis meant we had the resource of a large and expert product management team at our fingertips.”
Bridging the Gap
As a growing company, Work.Life didn’t have the in-house resources for a full-time product manager and hiring the resource part-time didn’t quite cut the mustard.
“We needed five-day-a-week exposure to support. Bringing in Deazy was perfect for this period of the company,” Emma says. “It worked better than bringing in a freelancer because you get the experience of a well-rounded team, not just one person.”
This middle phase is common in many growing businesses. With a clear roadmap for product development and solid processes now in place, Work.Life have the growth to hire a product manager going forward.
“Deazy's processes have massively helped us as a company to use our time better, free up resources internally and increase productivity of work.”
The story continues…
With a solid product management structure in place, Work.Life and Deazy are continuing the magic with a couple of exciting products to create more cohesive and engaging experiences for their members. In the pipeline is a digital management system that recreates the Work.Life onboarding experience online without losing their hallmark personal touch, a new set of member apps and new feature-sets for the existing product portfolio.