How Team Alignment Affects Corporate Culture

Overview

What comes to mind when you hear the words corporate culture? Go ahead and pause for a moment and let your mind wander. What conclusions did you come to? Why do we pay so much attention to this topic anyway? Well, there are several reasons that I can think of: A strong culture in any business is vital to its long-term success and stability, companies with a strong and cohesive culture tend to attract like-minded people, which results in higher employee retention and productivity, a weak culture weakens the company’s ability to adapt to changes in the external environment, which decreases its chances of success.

Team alignment is a process that allows members of a team to “come together” as a single unit. By aligning goals, roles, responsibilities, communication styles and work methods with those of other team members, people can overcome their differences and work effectively as a group toward their common objectives. This is why the importance of team alignment is super critical for the success of any organization.

To create an effective product design team it is crucial that you first establish your own unique identity as a company/team/group by defining its unique strengths as well as areas for improvement. A strong sense of who you are will ensure all your have a consistent tone and style. Product Designers will then trust that the decisions made are in line with your brand values. With this approach, design choices can be confidently communicated within the team and externally.

A strong shared vision will guide you through challenging times during execution by keeping everyone moving towards a shared goal rather than diverging onto separate paths. This means dealing effectively with internal debates, especially when it comes to design issues – where personal styles may naturally clash. Issues such as visual hierarchy , colour palettes and grids become more difficult to agree upon if differing opinions exist on how they should be applied or interpreted. We have found that defining these key features early on before any work has been done is the best way forward – always consider it a must

Talking of grid .. many of you are probably wondering how to create a good grid system which your designs can fit into. So I thought it would be useful to share with you some basic tips of what makes a good grid, and some examples of grids in action. Although the topic is large and issues such as responsive design and advanced breakpoints may need to be considered – we’ll keep this article simple by focussing on the key features that make for an effective grid system:

The first thing to consider when creating a good grid is defining its name! Some people feel the term “Grid” should only apply to those systems which involve 12 equally sized columns – as opposed to say an odd number such as 15 or 17. However, after much debate we have concluded that either is acceptable and we will be using the term “Grid” loosely here to represent both.

1: Progressive Enhancement is important!

One of the biggest dangers when creating a grid system is that it can become too bloated, breaking down into an unruly mess of code – once this happens you pretty much have to start all over again… It’s therefore wise to remember the web standards mantra of “Progressive Enhancement”. This approach allows for your basic design layout (be it 12 or 16 columns) to work without issue on older browsers such as IE7/8 – with enhanced features being added in for modern browsers which support more advanced CSS properties.

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2: Use Flexbox where possible

As far as possible, aim for your columns to be displayed using flexbox rather than floats – this will allow you to avoid dealing with any bothersome clearing issues. Take for example the above screenshot of a grid layout created by Chris Coyier over at CSS-Tricks.com which has been adapted from a design originally intended for a traditional pixels based grid system…

As you can see, getting it functioning without a flexbox would have been a complete pain in the backside!

3: Avoid nested grids if possible

The use of nested grids should be avoided whenever at all possible – as they tend to result in far more complex markup and unnecessarily verbose stylesheets. If your client is insistent that their logo must always appear in the top left hand corner then don’t try fighting them on it – just design the layout using a single grid that loops infinitely.

Also Read: How To Improve Team Alignment

4: Use descriptive class names

It can be tempting to simply name your classes something like “column” or “row” however, when the time comes for you or another developer to revisit your code in 6 months time they might find this task somewhat difficult. Instead, if at all possible try and make use of language that makes sense to both yourself and anyone else who might need to work on the project – i.e., perhaps consider calling them “primary-content”, “secondary-navigation” or “tertiary-search”.