Role Overview & Interactions

Key Roles in NEXT

Building further on the Success Blueprint, there are three key roles to successfully embedding NEXT and design in your organization's way of working:

Champions

A Champion is responsible for accelerating innovation and ensuring the design process is embedded in the organization’s way of working. Champions are responsible for onboarding new Champions, Sponsors and Teams and act as enablers to the business.

Sponsors

A sponsor owns and manages a Theme within NEXT. Sponsors are responsible for driving innovation in their Theme, for making decisions in each phase of the design process, and for ensuring projects in their Theme progress further. They interact with both Champions and Teams on a regular basis.

Team Leads

Team leads operationalize projects and coordinate project Teams. They interact with Champions and Sponsors to discuss progress and make decisions. They plan their projects in Sprints and organize Weekly Sprint meetings. Team Leads also organize phase wrap-up sessions with Sponsors, during which deliverables are presented and decisions are made.

Key Interaction Points

To ensure Sponsors and Teams get in the flow of working with NEXT and following the design process, NEXT recommends a couple of key interaction points that help build routines.

Theme-level Interactions

On a Theme-level, NEXT recommends the following meetings:

• A Sponsor Onboarding Lab when starting out with a new Theme
• A North Star definition workshop and Opportunity Mapping sessions right after the onboarding
• On a quarterly basis, NEXT recommends organizing a quarterly Theme Review meeting with Champion and Sponsor.

Project-level Interactions

On a Project-level, NEXT recommends the following meetings:

• A Team Onboarding Lab to get a new team started with their project on NEXT
• Phase Planning & Phase-end Retrospective meeting at the start of a new phase during which the team plans the upcoming phase
• Weekly Team Sprint Standups during which the team discusses and reflects on their progress
• Monthly check-in calls between the Team Lead and dedicated Champion
• Phase-end Wrap up after completing each phase, during which the team presents the key deliverables of the last phase to their Sponsor and decisions about next steps are taken

Resources

If you want a complete overview of all the roles and various interaction points NEXT recommends, please download the NEXT Roles & Interactions Cheat Sheet below.