Objective: To propose a lightweight process designed to increase development velocity, reduce rework, and enhance the quality of our products.

1. Improving Our Development Flow

Our team consistently ships excellent work. As we've scaled, we've encountered some natural growing pains common in fast-moving companies. This proposal outlines a small adjustment to our process to address these points proactively, helping us build even more effectively.

We have an opportunity to improve in three key areas:

• Reducing Rework: Catching misalignments before code is written, saving valuable development time.
• Ensuring Product Quality: Preventing critical usability issues from reaching late stages.
• Creating Predictable Flow: Giving the development team the clarity they need to build with fewer blockers.

A key source of this friction is the occasional lack of a single, clear "source of truth" for a feature's user flow before development begins. This can lead to the ambiguity demonstrated in our recent projects.

2. Recent Examples

Case Study 1: Privacy Pools – An Opportunity to Align Earlier

This project shows how small misalignments can compound. Because a finalized user flow wasn't established as the source of truth upfront:

• Development started without a clear interface to build.
• The partner requested redesigns after code had already been implemented.

Impact: This led to significant rework and delays that could be avoided with a clearer starting point.

Case Study 2: EF Wallet – An Opportunity to Protect Product Quality

This project highlights the importance of an early UX review to protect our users and partners. A review late in the process identified: