What is Middleware?
Problem Statement
Managers lacked a clear view of how their team’s bandwidth was distributed across projects. This led to misaligned priorities, overcommitments, and reliance on manual spreadsheets.
Problem Discovery
User behaviour: We saw heavy engagement with the minimal allocation view baked into our Initiatives feature, signalling strong demand for deeper insights.
User feedback: In customer calls, managers often asked, “Where is my team’s time actually going?”
Research
User interviews: ~12 managers/program leaders interviewed; majority voiced difficulty balancing priorities without bandwidth visibility.
Survey: 68% of respondents relied on external tools (Sheets, Excel, Jira) for allocation tracking.
Usage analysis: Orgs with >5 projects frequently had contributor overlap, correlating with missed deadlines.
Market scan: Allocation appeared either as a premium competitive feature or completely absent, validating both urgency and opportunity.
Defining job to be done
“When I’m planning or reviewing my team’s work, I need to understand how bandwidth is allocated across projects so I can make trade-offs and avoid overcommitting.”
Research
User interviews: ~12 managers/program leaders interviewed; majority voiced difficulty balancing priorities without bandwidth visibility.
Survey: 68% of respondents relied on external tools (Sheets, Excel, Jira) for allocation tracking.
Usage analysis: Orgs with >5 projects frequently had contributor overlap, correlating with missed deadlines.
Market scan: Allocation appeared either as a premium competitive feature or completely absent, validating both urgency and opportunity.
Competitive Analysis with SWOT
Shaping up the solutions
We follow a process for the functionalities to include in a solution. We first list down the pain points and curiosities of the users and the functionalities that can satisfy those in two columns and then mix match.
Prioritising what to ship first
To accelerate delivery, we released the feature in two stages: v0 for early validation, and v1 for the complete functionality.
We're only keeping Allocation, history & trends, and then the major initiatives that are on-going, and on top of that some overview and AI helpers to set the context.
Wireframe
This is the first draft of me visualising how this feature would look, then came in a lot of feedback from self and stakeholders about the layout, choice of graphs to show certain data and UX copy.
Final Screens
To accelerate delivery, we released the feature in two stages: v0 for early validation, and v1 for the complete functionality.
We're only keeping Allocation, history & trends, and then the major initiatives that are on-going, and on top of that some overview and AI helpers to set the context.
Impact
Adoption & Engagement: Within 8 weeks, the Allocation Dashboard became the #3 most-visited manager view, with 55% of active managers using it weekly.
Efficiency Gains: Customers reported reducing allocation planning time by ~70%—from multi-hour spreadsheet pivots to minutes within the product.
Revenue & Retention: Allocation became a core talking point in 40% of competitive sales conversations, directly influencing deals, and contributed to improved renewal rates among larger customers.
Customer Confidence: In post-launch interviews, 90% of managers said allocation gave them more confidence when making trade-offs and prioritization decisions with leadership.
MORE work
