Collaboration and Cross-Functional Teams: Adobe's Approach to Successful End to End Journey Mapping & Analysis
How Adobe's End to End team collaborates with functional leaders to improve customer experience at launch
Introduction
My End to End (E2E) Journey Team in Adobe’s Digital Media business works as a small consulting team within our large product organization. We work closely with various teams to align them to the goals for major launches at the company. In this post I cover how such a team unlocks value for business by improving the customer’s experience.
E2E reviews are not new. Some times “Product Reviews” masquerade as E2E reviews. These are too siloed to be called E2E reviews. We, like Gokul on X, believe that product reviews should be abolished in favor of End to End (E2E) Journey reviews so that teams can get more value from these reviews.
When do you need End to End reviews?
As companies get larger the following things happen:
Roles get specialized and sliced smaller. Example: Growth PMs in addition to “Core PMs”
Centers of excellence form. Example: Product Marketing, Go To Market Teams, Sales teams, dot com teams form to provide focused attention to these functions
Product Design separates from Go to Market Design (dot com, Social, Email) and new teams form and try to “Stay in sync”
Experiments abound. Pricing pages are being tested, lead-gen campaigns are being tested, landing pages are being optimized and the product is changing too
Product leadership and business leadership often separates
Senior leaders have greater demands on their time and move away from product and go to market decisions.
When one or many of these things happen, launches get complicated. It becomes hard to consolidate let alone improve how customers experience of your “offer.” And, lets not forget that your offer is always more than your product. The E2E journey teams does exactly this. We show how different segments of our customers experience your offer through different routes to markets.
We provide unbiased analysis of the customer experience to key stakeholders. And, we make recommendations to improve this journey based on past successes within and outside Adobe. Time and resource permitting, we also run look-back reviews to build institutional knowledge. This is a very collaborative process.
The Power of Collaboration at Adobe for E2E Journey Analysis
Adobe has a great culture. It is my assertion that teams at Adobe are far more cooperative than other companies in the Valley. We come together across functions to deliver a great customer experience.
We start the E2E Journey analysis process by asking the business teams for goal(s) for a release. Examples of such goals are:
Goal 1: We want to drive free trials of Photoshop at the launch in September
Goal 2: We want x% of paid Photoshop users to use Generative Fill
We then work with leadership to align on key journeys that support each of these goals. Alignment meetings bring in data from past releases and experiments. These meetings are a great prework to exec reviews.
Here are examples of some of the journeys that align to the goals listed above:
Goal 1: Free trial journeys
From a Google Search → Generative Fill SEO landing page → Free Trial → product onboarding experience
From Paid search to Generative Fill SEM Page landing page → Free Trial → product onboarding experience
From Paid Social posts → which page →Free Trial
Goal 2: Paid user feature use journeys
Getting users that launch an older version of Photoshop to update their app
Onboarding for users that launch the new version
We work with each team to get their visuals and stitch together the journey of the particular customer segment that is being targeted for launch.
Each of the boxes above can be a lot of screenshots. For example:
Free user journeys might have a lot screens in the sign up flow.
The in-product tactics can have triggers and targeting that differs from one another
Key Benefits of Cross-Functional Collaboration
Explore the advantages that Adobe has experienced due to effective cross-functional collaboration.
Discuss how collaboration improves problem-solving, innovation, and decision-making in journey mapping.
Overcoming Challenges in Cross-Functional Collaboration
Even though Adobe has a great culture, teams do want to look good in executive reviews. This is why E2E consultants require tact and cross functional expertise. Consultants also require great communication skills that document issues and state improvements without throwing any team or leader under the bus.
Best Practices for Encouraging Collaboration
I’ll write a detailed post on this later but here are the highlights. Reminding each team of the goal for each release and ensuring that the goal posts don’t keep moving are key to driving alignment and getting cooperation from teams. Here are things we do to encourage collaboration.
Write up goals and share them broadly
Start with a structural journey and fill in the screens later
Gather input from each team and consolidate their “Screens” into a walkthrough.
Run Preflight meeting with cross functional leaders BEFORE a key review
We do a lot of this through Miro early on and then move to Figma since most designs that are getting implemented are in Figma
When stakeholders see what your customers see, it is hard NOT to do the right thing
Conclusion
In summary, here are the three takeaways from this post:
E2E Journey Analysis is transformative: This post underscores the transformative impact of End-to-End (E2E) journey mapping at Adobe, showcasing how this holistic, customer-focused approach surpasses traditional product reviews. By emphasizing the entire customer journey rather than isolated product aspects, Adobe has been able to enhance the effectiveness of major product launches and significantly improve the overall customer experience.
Cross-Functional Collaboration unlocks value: A key takeaway is the vital role of cross-functional collaboration in successful E2E journey mapping. Adobe's culture of cooperation, integrating diverse teams like Product Marketing, Sales, and Design, leads to more innovative solutions and effective problem-solving. This synergy is crucial in aligning diverse perspectives and skills towards a unified goal, ensuring a cohesive and comprehensive customer experience.
Medium to large organizations need E2E Journey Analysis: We encourage organizations to adopt similar collaborative practices in their journey analysis efforts. Practical approaches, like using collaborative tools such as Miro and Figma and conducting preflight meetings for alignment, readers are urged to consider how these strategies can be applied in their own contexts.
My team and I would love to hear your thoughts or experiences with collaboration in journey mapping.
Regards,
—Anubhav
Folks on the small and mighty E2E team at Adobe: