https://news.sap.com

In 2022, SAP’s global communications team and Syde collaborated on a large redesign of the platform to match the team’s new focus on three types of content: news articles, featured content and corporate blog articles. In the previous year, we had already looked into paths to transition the platform to WordPress’ new block editor, and we decided that this redesign provided a unique opportunity to empower editing teams with this new block-based editing interface.

About the project

Key challenges in the rollout of the redesign were:

• The high number of customization options and custom functionality created for the specific use cases and communication needs of local or regional sites
• The decision to adopt the block-editor for articles only and leave landing pages ‘static’, reducing the scope of the project to fit SAP’s budget and time-constraints. We mitigated this trade-off by introducing a component-based architecture for all page layouts, greatly lowering the efforts needed in case of a future decision to transition to a full-site editing experience.
• The requirement to adopt a flexible architecture so that a staggered rollout of the new design and functionality across the network became possible. After the global site, local teams could opt in to the new editor functionality at their own pace, starting – of course – with the German site.
• A large legacy codebase still relying on PHP 7.4 instead of PHP 8.* and an outdated deployment pipeline needed to be overhauled to ensure a future-proof solution.

My role and responsibilities during this project

As team lead for the development team maintaining SAP’s news network, I was the client’s first point of contact for this large relaunch project.

Throughout 2023, I assumed the role of product owner on the agency side to gather technical requirements, guide the creation of a design system, conduct user and stakeholder interviews and write user stories for the agile development team tasked with the development of a new WordPress theme. We established a roadmap, which we revisited regularly to adjust timings according to development progress and the introduction of new features and requirements.

What I learned from this project

• The importance of delegation and prioritization, especially when combining the PO responsibilities for a project with management tasks for other, unrelated projects.
• The value of regular check-ins with the development team, taking time to discuss the details of individual stories and ensuring that there is a solid understanding of the client’s business goals. This helps prevent situations where a lack of information about these goals impacts the architectural decisions underpinning the development.
• Investing in a design system greatly improves the experience for the client and the developers. Instead of focusing on entire layouts, it facilitates discussion and iterations on the level of individual components and the composition of these elements on the page.