Discovery workshop for AIMS

About AIMS

Before we jump into what AIMS (accounting integration management solution) is we need to paint a picture of the accounting space at Kroger where this solution is needed. Whenever any new initiative happens at Kroger: replacing legacy system, modernization effort or a new tool/process accounting will be involved in some capacity. And it is often the last pillar to be brought into the effort. Which creates rework, failed initiatives and extended timeliness and budgets.

There are many reasons why accounting is being involved in the end. And also many reasons why that creates major issues for the initiative. And we (design team of 3 at Kroger) were tasked to help the team with understanding the problem & their user, and solution for that problem and user.

And for a long time PMs and ENG were working too hard, to deliver something that needs to be redone or adjusted to include accounting processes/data. And that workload usually meant chasing stakeholders, SMEs, accounting experts to get the answers they need, to understand what solution will work for everyone. Which causes a lot of delays, going over budgets, overworking, stress and inefficiencies.

This is when many PMs from many teams at Kroger started recognizing what a poor work stream that is and exploring how they solve for it. A few PM’s came together to brainstorm. They decided to call this project AIMS - accounting integration management solution. Hoping they can build something that will integrate accounting knowledge, and allow managing and digging through it when needed.

What did the AIMS team want to do?

AIMS team came to us with the ask to help them figure out how can they build a solution that will do the intake and storage of accounting knowledge that it can deliver on demand. Making a mistake of jumping into a solution, without going through the proper framing of problem, unpacking, and exploring different angles.

The context provided to us lacked documentation and varied from call to calls. This is a major red flag. And so we knew we needed to bring everyone into the room and understand what is really the problem here. And let go of the solution for the time-being, in order to see all of the opportunities more clearly.

How could design help AIMS with their effort?

We wanted to unpack all of the peaces of this puzzle, for our understanding but also for the clarity of the AIMS team. We started to brainstorm what is clear to us (not much) and what is very ambiguous. I was putting together various activities with the help of another designer, and my manager was helping us prioritize. We did a few sessions talking through our strategy and the things that would be more valuable than others. As a certified Luma practitioner I was using Luma recipes and suggestions as my resource tool kit. We were mindful of time: the project wanted to move fast and at the same time many participants have a very busy schedule.

The final plan looked like this:

Day 1:

  1. Abstraction Ladder (we wanted to unpack the problem)

  2. Assumption Smash (were curious where does the team have gaps, and how can they agree on what is known VS a fact)

  3. Empathy Map (understanding the user and their needs is the core of finding the right solution, so we wanted to have that represented)

  4. Current Journey Map (we wanted to document in detail what is the current process and where our user struggles the most)

Day 2:

  1. Future Journey Map (in the future journey we wanted to imagine a happy path where all the major pain points were addressed and solved for)

  2. The Brainstorming Session (part of the future map was answering the HMW statements with potential ideas)

  3. Importance Difficulty Matrix (the ideas we collected in the previous exercise would be then used to prioritize ideas based on the highest importance and highest difficulty)

How it went

There were a few complications at the start: the workshop was scheduled last minute and people had a limited availability. There was also a noticeable pressure from the PMs to pack more activities into each day and to go through a lot. As we started going through the activities, people would drop off and join. Some of the people didn’t participate. I was facilitating the activities of day one and these were new challenges for me.

On the bright side, the people that actively participated were full of ideas and insights. The picture started getting a bit clearer for me and the whole team. There was a lot of out of the box thinking.

The 2nd day was facilitated by my colleague. and it went a bit smoother. Some important SMEs were able to join and had a wealth on knowledge to share on the topic. Some activities, like The importance difficulty matrix confused people. And perhaps if we had more we could have gotten more out of it.

We walked out of the 2 day workshop with a ton of insights.

There are some of the artifacts we had at the end of the workshop.

We then wanted to break them down by sub themes within those themes.

We were also aware of the readability of such a vast map of insights. So we wanted to highlight high level themes for those who could only scan this Mural.

We also wanted to focus separately on HMWs and Pain Points. As these would be the driving elements of our solutioning phase.

What we got out of this workshop

After we have collected the insights we wanted to synthesize them. This means going through everything we heard and finding patterns, asking more questions and proposing a plan going forward.

The synthesis happened during the coarse of the next week. The space is very heavy with industry knowledge, heavy terminology and coplicated processes. So we spend a good amount of time trying to understand and organize.

We started by groopping insights into themes.

Next steps

Based on what we got, we knew we need to do more framing and brainstorming to land on a potential solution. There were a couple of unknowns as far budget and deadline goes for this project. And as we were waiting on answers, that would inform our strategy, we were forming a plan forward.

The brainstorming activity was jammed with the future map and so it wasn’t given the time and attention it requires. So we wanted to do a Creative Matrix, to help with that.

The prioritization activity didn’t produce of much of answers as we needed for it. So we wanted to do something similar but that would be more clear for our group. Bull’s Eye Diagramming was our choice.

And before we can get to a solution and a roadmap, we wanted to do a Buy VS Build activity, that can help orient what solutions we can have ready to go and what needs to be created from scratch.

Around this time Kroger business leaders were evaluating budgets for the coming year and unfortunatly this project didn’t get a budget for fiscal year 2023. Mainly due to a high amount of modernizations that must happen asap. So of today the AIMS project is being parked till next year.

What did I learn in this project

I learned a lot about this space and the problem. Which is always great!

I was also able to build new bridges with the PMs I haven’t worked with before.

I also learned a couple of things that I could improve upon:

  1. I need to be given proper ammount of time to make sure we get the quality insights.

  2. The full group participation is mandatory for the quality of our findings.

  3. Rushing will never help the end goal. It’s better to do less but in depth. This would give us a level of confidence and understanding that we need.

  4. Navigating people that haven’t done such activities can be challenging.

  5. Gaining people’s trust comes with time. And is a separate skill to work on.

Thank you.