Managing a Complex K-12 Product Portfolio at Scale
How I simultaneously led four major design initiatives—spanning nutrition management, ERP systems,
state platforms, and design systems—while building a design practice from scratch and maintaining
quality, velocity, and team morale.
Role
Design Manager & Portfolio Lead
Company
LINQ (K-12 Education Technology)
Portfolio Scope
4 concurrent initiatives, 80+ UIs, 8-person team
The Challenge
Balancing multiple high-stakes initiatives while building a design practice
When I joined LINQ as Design Manager, I inherited a complex portfolio of products serving K-12 education —
each with urgent needs, different stakeholders, and competing priorities. Simultaneously, I was tasked with
building a design practice from scratch. The challenge wasn’t just managing projects; it was establishing design
as a strategic discipline while delivering on four critical initiatives.
No Centralized Design Function
Design decisions were scattered across product teams with no shared systems, processes, or governance.
Competing Priorities
Four major initiatives running concurrently, each with different timelines and technical constraints.
Resource Constraints
Limited design resources spread across multiple products required strategic allocation.
Heavy Technical Debt
Legacy architecture limited improvements, requiring roadmap negotiation to modernize.
Portfolio Overview
Four concurrent initiatives across the K-12 education ecosystem
State Food Distribution Platform
Scope: 23 states, state and district admins
Redesigned login, dashboard, agreements, and food ordering workflow.
- Role-based dashboard views
- Simplified agreement workflow
- Reduced survey steps from 15 to 7
- Improved information architecture
Titan Upload Mapping System
Scope: Nutrition staff and data administrators
Redesigned mapping tool enabling flexible imports and real-time validation.
- Flexible custom mapping
- Real-time validation
- Drag-and-drop mapping UI
- Reduced upload errors by 50%
LINQ ERP and Accounting Suite
Scope: School administrators, finance staff, IT
Led design for dynamic reporting, purchase order flows, payroll, and accounting.
- Dynamic reporting builder
- Streamlined purchase order workflow
- Payroll redesign (steps reduced 40%)
- New accounting module
SnackPaq Design System
Scope: All LINQ products
Built comprehensive design system used by design and development teams.
- Complete component library
- 8 UI themes
- Design tokens and documentation
- Reduced design-to-dev time by 35%
My Approach
Strategic portfolio management through prioritization, systems thinking, and team empowerment
Strategic Prioritization Framework
I created a scoring model based on:
- User Impact — Value to learners and staff
- Business Value — Revenue and strategic importance
- Technical Feasibility — Constraints and dependencies
- Effort vs Capacity — Workload balancing
This aligned stakeholders and reduced conflict around prioritization.
Design System as Force Multiplier
SnackPaq increased velocity across all initiatives by enabling:
- 40% fewer redundant UI builds
- Consistent UX patterns across teams
- Faster onboarding for new designers
- 60% fewer handoff errors
Team Structure and Allocation
My team balanced specialization with flexibility:
- 4 Designers — Owned initiatives and supported others
- 2 Researchers — Rotated by project needs
- 1 Design Systems Lead
- Myself — Portfolio oversight, alignment, coaching
Cadence and Communication
- Daily standups
- Weekly design reviews
- Bi-weekly stakeholder syncs
- Monthly retrospectives
- Quarterly roadmap planning
Risk Management and Dependencies
I maintained a portfolio-wide risk register for:
- Cross-project dependencies
- Resource collisions
- Technical limitations
- Stakeholder alignment gaps
This prevented last-minute fire drills.
Key Decisions
Critical choices that shaped portfolio success
Investing in Design System First
The Decision: Allocate 25% of team capacity to SnackPaq.
The Rationale: Reduce long-term duplication across products.
The Outcome: 40% reduction in redundant UI builds.
Embedding Researchers Across Initiatives
The Decision: Rotate researchers among product teams.
The Rationale: Build deeper context and trust with teams.
The Outcome: Faster adoption of insights into product design.
Standardizing on Adobe XD
The Decision: Adopt a single design tool across products.
The Rationale: Easier collaboration and design system use.
The Outcome: Reduced switching overhead and improved velocity.
Phased Rollout for State Platform
The Decision: Release in phases: 3-state pilot, 10-state expansion, full rollout.
The Rationale: Validate changes with real users first.
The Outcome: Improved quality and increased stakeholder confidence.
Portfolio Outcomes
Measurable impact across all four initiatives
Major initiatives delivered
Managed and shipped concurrently
User interfaces governed
Across all product lines
Reduction in redundant builds
Through design system reuse
Fewer handoff errors
Improved design-to-dev collaboration
Design system themes
Supporting local, state, and national systems
States using redesigned platform
State food distribution system
Initiative Highlights
How each project contributed to portfolio success
State Food Distribution Platform
The Challenge: 23 states relied on a platform with cluttered dashboards, complex agreement workflows, and a 15-step ordering survey.
My Approach: Researched multiple states, redesigned dashboards with role-based views, simplified agreements, and reduced the survey from 15 to 7 steps.
Portfolio Impact: Proved the ability to design for scale and informed patterns for other multi-tenant systems.
Titan Upload Mapping System
The Challenge: Nutrition staff struggled with rigid file uploads and frequent errors.
My Approach: Designed a flexible mapping UI with drag-and-drop, custom field mappings, and real-time validation with clear error messaging.
Portfolio Impact: Reduced upload errors by 50% and freed staff to focus on students instead of wrestling with tooling.
LINQ ERP and Accounting Suite
The Challenge: Administrators needed better reporting, smoother purchase orders, simplified payroll, and modern accounting tools.
My Approach: Led design for reporting, purchase orders, payroll redesign, and a new accounting module, prioritizing by impact and feasibility.
Portfolio Impact: Reduced payroll processing steps by 40%, improving month-end close and giving leaders more time for strategy.
SnackPaq Design System
The Challenge: Inconsistent UX across acquired products and no shared design language.
My Approach: Built a design system with 8 themes, a robust component library, documentation, and governance rituals.
Portfolio Impact: Created a foundation for all initiatives, reduced design-to-dev time by 35%, and unified the LINQ product line.
Key Learnings
What managing a complex portfolio taught me about design leadership
Design systems are strategic investments
Investing in SnackPaq early felt risky, but it became the infrastructure that made everything else faster and more consistent.
Design systems are not overhead — they are multipliers of velocity and quality.
Transparent prioritization builds trust
A clear framework for prioritization turns difficult trade-offs into collaborative decisions.
When people understand the “why,” they are more willing to align around the “what” and “when.”
Team structure must balance focus and flexibility
Giving designers ownership over specific initiatives built expertise, while explicitly allowing cross-initiative support prevented burnout and bottlenecks.
Portfolio management is orchestration, not control
My role was not to make every design decision, but to create the conditions for great decisions:
clear context, strong guardrails, psychological safety, and alignment across teams and leadership.