I worked for Saint-Gobain as a product manager on several projects, including a web factory built with my former employer, Playgrnd (product ops & UX), and the agency FFW (UI & Drupal development).

Problem

Until 2019, brands had full autonomy on their website development, it soon became impossible to keep consistency across all the different brands and countries where they were operating. Every website was different; using various technologies, accumulating not only a massive technical debt but also a UX debt.

They had to start over from scratch and initiate a web factory.

Initial constraints

• 100+ websites had to be revamped within 2 years and a solid roadmap was needed to deliver all the websites on time.
• Each country had its own challenges and specificities, so we couldn't imagine providing a single template that they would all use.
• Drupal 7 (which most Saint-Gobain websites were using at the time) will stop being maintained as of November 2021. That was the deadline of the IT team.
• Last but not least, most country managers weren't trained with UX methods. They didn't know their users and had no data to make informed decisions.

Early vision

Our vision was to provide a library of personae, UI agnostic user flows and features, so that the country managers can pick and choose what's relevant for their business. They would then be automatically connected to the PIM and the right UI depending on the brand.

<aside> 🎯 A 3 steps process for country managers to create a new website:

1. Pick the right personae from a pre-validated list
2. Select the relevant user flows and features attached to each personae
3. Review the PIM connection with the IT team

</aside>

But before the rollout of 100+ websites using this 3 step process, we had to gather enough information to create a library.

As the product lead, my scope was to help deploy the first 4 pilots that would serve as references in the future. Those pilots included 3 brands in 4 different countries:

🇨🇿 - Isover® Czech republic

🇫🇷 - Placo® France

🇬🇧 - Gyproc® United Kingdom

🇦🇪 - Gyproc® Middle East

Methodology