These four steps will help the UX Design team focus on what has to be done to assist Product Management.

1. Collect Information About the Problem

• Be a kind of detective in the early stage of a project. Find out as much as we can about the three Ps (people, problem, project).
• Meeting with the client (no matter whether externally or internally) and identifying the product’s requirements (often in the form of a standardized product requirement document).
• Benchmarking and trend analysis.

2. Getting Ready to Design

• Whiteboard or paper sketchboard rough designs.
• Review with team, note changes and decisions to drive wireframes.

3. Design

• UX designers create wireframes and prototypes to document the experience and then hand them to the developers.

4. Approval

• The “Buy In” process.  Create a special presentation to tell stakeholders the design story.  The presentation shows stages of the process, deliverables and interactions, and aim to give stakeholders easy access to all of the information.

Much credit goes to Marcin Treder’s article Beyond Wireframing: The Real-Life UX Design Process which echoes my experience with real life deliverables and deadlines.