Doing More With Less: How to Optimize Your Design Team’s Efficiency
In today’s fast-paced tech environment, the pressure to deliver more with fewer resources isn’t just a challenge —it’s reality. For design teams, this means working smarter, not harder, while maintaining quality and delivering results that move the needle. But what does “doing more with less” really mean in practice?
Having spent nearly a decade at Amazon AWS — where over 500 successful projects taught me the value of efficiency — I’ve seen firsthand what works and what doesn’t. Here’s how design teams can focus their efforts, cut unnecessary steps, and still deliver their best work.
Teamwork powering endless possibilities together.
1. Streamline Workflows Without Sacrificing Quality
At AWS, we often found ourselves drowning in unnecessary processes. Over time, we learned that refining workflows wasn’t about doing less —it was about doing better. For instance, implementing a centralized design system reduced duplication of work and freed our team to focus on solving more complex challenges.
Key Action: Audit your current workflow. Are there tools that don’t add value? Hand-offs that create confusion? Simplifying isn’t cutting corners—it’s making sure every step adds purpose.
2. Embrace Agile, But Stay Flexible
Agile methodologies are the backbone of many modern design workflows, providing structure and iterative progress. But Agile is not a rigid framework —it’s a mindset built around adaptability. Teams sometimes fall into the trap of over-structuring their processes, losing sight of Agile’s true purpose: enabling creativity and responsiveness to change.
At AWS, retrospectives after each sprint allowed us to reflect, adapt, and refine our approach based on what worked and what didn’t. Agile wasn’t about blindly following a plan; it was about creating a structure that served our unique needs and empowered the team to pivot when opportunities arose.
Tip: Use retrospectives not just to celebrate successes but to identify bottlenecks and areas for growth. Encourage your team to shape Agile practices in a way that aligns with your goals and culture. The best teams don’t just adopt Agile—they make it their own.
3. Prioritize Ruthlessly
Not every task deserves your team’s attention. At AWS, backlog refinement sessions were a game-changer for us. By rigorously evaluating effort versus impact, we ensured our focus stayed on projects that drove real results. For example, deprioritizing minor UI tweaks gave us the bandwidth to tackle a major feature launch that directly impacted customer engagement.
Exercise: Start each sprint by identifying your top priorities. Ask, “Does this align with our business goals? Is the impact worth the effort?” These questions can guide your team toward the work that matters most.
4. Quality Assurance Is Non-Negotiable
Efficiency isn’t about skipping steps —it’s about preventing costly mistakes upfront. At AWS, peer reviews and design critiques were non-negotiable. We created a checklist for every major milestone, ensuring that no detail fell through the cracks.
Real-World Example: During one high-stakes launch, a peer review caught a critical usability issue early in the process. Addressing it then saved us weeks of rework and ensured a seamless user experience at launch.
Practical Advice: Develop a simple checklist for quality standards. Make it a habit, not an afterthought.
5. Leverage Automation Where Possible
Automation doesn’t replace creativity, but it can eliminate repetitive tasks that slow your team down. At AWS, automating the handoff process between design and development cut errors by almost 30% and gave designers more time to focus on strategic work.
Actionable Insight: Look for low-hanging fruit in your workflow. Could automated design specs or version control tools save your team hours each week? Small automations often lead to big wins.
Why Team Efficiency Matters More Than Ever
In a world of tighter budgets and rising expectations, efficiency isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s critical to survival. But efficiency doesn’t mean overloading your team or sacrificing quality. It’s about working smarter, staying focused, and using the right tools and processes to amplify your team’s impact.
From streamlining workflows to fostering a culture of learning and improvement, these strategies aren’t just theoretical. They’re the lessons I’ve learned from real challenges and successes—and they work.
The bottom line? Efficiency is about maximizing the value of every resource—your time, your team, and your tools. Focus on what truly matters, and your team won’t just do more with less—they’ll thrive.