Vitaly Friedman begins by emphasizing that when embarking on any UX project, there is often little confidence in achieving successful outcomes—especially among teams that have experienced empty promises and poor execution in the past. He asserts that good UX has a significant impact on business success, but to build confidence in future UX projects, it is essential to identify major bottlenecks and uncover potential shortcomings that may affect the stakeholders involved.

UX Does Not Cause Disruptions; It Solves Problems

Friedman explains that bottlenecks are often the most disruptive elements within any organization. Every team, unit, or department may have a bottleneck, which is often well known among employees but rarely reaches senior management due to their detachment from daily operations. These bottlenecks could be a single senior developer in the team, outdated legacy tools, or a confusing workflow riddled with frequent errors. Such obstacles often lead to long wait times, project delays, and inefficient workarounds.

Before undertaking any UX work, Friedman advises identifying the factors slowing down the organization and proving that UX is not a disruption but rather a solution to internal inefficiencies. Once value has been demonstrated—no matter how small—stakeholders will quickly become interested in seeing more of what UX can offer.

Work Is Never Just “Work”

Friedman highlights that meetings, reviews, testing, presentations, deployments, support, updates, and bug fixes—all of these unplanned tasks—can interfere with planned work. Uncovering the root causes of these unplanned tasks and identifying critical bottlenecks that slow down progress is not only the first step in improving existing workflows but also a strong foundation for demonstrating UX’s value.

The Theory of Constraints

Friedman references Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints, which states that any improvements made outside of a bottleneck are merely illusions. Improvements made after a bottleneck are futile because they will always be waiting for work to come through the constraint, while improvements made before the bottleneck only result in more work accumulating at the bottleneck itself.

Avoid Operating at 100% Capacity

The goal is to maximize workflow efficiency by optimizing the bottleneck while allowing non-bottleneck areas to have idle time to enhance overall system performance. Friedman stresses that efforts to maximize resource utilization—i.e., running all departments at 100% capacity—can be counterproductive. As Goldratt notes, “An hour lost at the bottleneck is an hour lost for the entire system. An hour saved at a non-bottleneck is worthless.”

Recommended Reading: The Phoenix Project

Friedman recommends The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford—a remarkable novel about the challenges of delivering projects. While not specifically about design, he describes it as an excellent book for designers looking to become more strategic in their work. It provides a compelling and realistic perspective on the complexities of project delivery, albeit from a more technical standpoint.

Conclusion

Friedman concludes that people generally dislike abrupt changes and uncertainty, and UX work often disrupts their usual way of doing things, leading to resistance by default. Therefore, before introducing major changes, gaining buy-in for UX initiatives requires building trust and demonstrating the tangible benefits of UX in their daily workflows. To achieve this, UX professionals must work alongside stakeholders, listen to their pain points, and identify key bottlenecks to propose steps that enhance the existing workflow. This approach lays the foundation for earning trust and proving that UX is not a disruption but a solution to existing challenges.

This article is adapted from a LinkedIn post by Vitaly Friedman.