Duration: 3 months
Overview
Redgate Monitor, an enterprise database monitoring tool is Redgate’s most important product, contributing a significant portion of the annual revenue for the company. As the lead product designer for the product (and working as part of the product leadership team) I defined, agreed, shared and actioned a long-term design vision for Redgate’s monitoring solution. The vision included a diagnosis of the current challenges in relation to the long-term business goals, a vision for what the monitoring solution could be in 3-5 years time and a set of guiding principles and actions to put the strategy into practice.
Background
Redgate is moving from a software company offering perpetual license solutions for SQL Server databases (i.e. an upfront purchase) to one offering subscription based solutions for multiple database types. By 2026 Redgate wants to have 100,000 servers being monitored using Redgate products as part of the company mission to make ingeniously simple software that helps teams get the most value out of any database, on any platform, anywhere.
As a well-established product (shown below), with a growing customer base SQL Monitor is well place to achieve these goals. However, the product has been designed to only monitor SQL Server databases and has historically been geared towards small to medium sized businesses, rather than enterprise customers.
Identifying the key design challenges
Working with the monitor leadership group, along with the product teams I identified and agreed the key design challenges as:
- Moving beyond SQL Server – Moving beyond SQL Server will require re-evaluating the conceptual design of the product to ensure that concepts, terminology, user flows, design patterns and the information architecture can support other database types, such as Postgres, Oracle and MySQL.
- Addressing product debt – SQL Monitor has built-up significant product debt as the product has grown organically over the last 15+ years (the first version of SQL Monitor was released in 2008). The strategy should outline how to address this product debt, including better utilising Honeycomb – Redgate’s design system.
- Tracking and driving customer value – As Redgate moves to a subscription business model it will be increasingly important to actively track and drive the customer experience and resulting customer success.
- Scaling Monitor without harming the UX – As Monitor scales to support cross-database and to better support enterprise customers with large, complex environments there is the risk that this will have a detrimental effect on the user experience (UX) of the product.
Defining the product vision
Like the fabled North star, a long-term vision helps to establish a shared understanding of where to take a product. It offers a glimpse into a potential future offering for customers. Working with the monitor designers, along with the leadership group and product teams I led the creation of the long-term vision for SQL Monitor. This outlined what Redgate’s monitoring solution could offer customers in 4-5 years time. The vision was explored and discussed through a number of workshops and then captured through a set of storyboards shown below.
Showcasing the design vision
In addition to the storyboards, I created a prototype showcasing some of the key concepts outlined in the storyboards.
Communicating the design vision
Whilst creating and agreeing the long-term vision was very much a collective effort, it’s important to share it with those who were not involved in the process. In order to do this, I created internal comms in the form of a blog post outlining the vision and rationale behind it, along with a short summary video for those who would rather watch than read. I also presented the vision to key stakeholders, such as product teams and sales representatives.
Establishing design guidelines
To support the desired vision I agreed a set of guiding design principles (shown below) to help inform design decisions and guide the design direction of the product.
Results
Defining, agreeing and communicating the long-term design vision for a key product like SQL Monitor was always going to be challenge because of the importance of the product, the number of stakeholders involved and the tendency for organisations to focus on the short-term, rather than long-term.
By taking a co-design approach I was able to explore different possibilities, get buy-in from key stakeholders and create a vision that really helps to inform the long term product roadmap. The work has already helped establish a shared understanding of the long-term vision for Redgate’s monitoring solution and initiated many of the activities that will be required to get there.
Learnings
- Align with business goals – Ensuring that the vision was in sync with business goals made it easier to get stakeholder buy-in and to get necessary changes into the product roadmap.
- Set a bold vision (but not too bold) – A vision that is too bold will too easily get dismissed. The vision would be bold, but achievable.
- Show, don’t tell – Storyboards and prototypes worked well for communicating the vision. Teams and stakeholders could see the desired user experience, rather than relying on their own interpretation.
- Design direction, not dictation – Design principles and concepts provided teams with guidance, without dictating exactly how the design should be.
- Empower teams to deliver vision – The collaborative approach empowered teams to take ownership of the vision and to deliver on long-term goals.