Role: Senior Product Design Manager, Tesco
Leading design across digital Clubcard
17.3m
6
Creating clarity across a growing loyalty ecosystem
Digital Clubcard spans a connected portfolio of rewards, savings and personalised experiences delivered across multiple squads and customer journeys. As the portfolio grew, my focus shifted from individual proposition delivery to creating the clarity, alignment and capability needed for teams to deliver effectively at scale.
Portfolio impact
Maintained delivery across multiple squads during organisational change
Improved visibility of priorities, dependencies and capacity
Established more consistent planning and prioritisation practices
Identified delivery risks and blockers earlier
Increased confidence in delivery commitments and resource planning
Organisational impact
Established planning and governance practices across Design and Research
Supported the transition of portfolio ownership to a new Design Manager
Improved collaboration and dependency management across teams
Developed organisation-design options to improve delivery flow
Protected customer and portfolio commitments through a period of change
Team Impact
Led and developed a multidisciplinary team of 11
Supported recruitment, onboarding and portfolio reorganisation
Created regular forums for alignment, feedback and quality
Invested in coaching, progression and individual development
Built a supportive environment combining psychological safety with clear accountability
Increasing visibility across the portfolio
As Loyalty expanded, teams needed a shared understanding of what was being delivered, where capacity was constrained and how work connected across the wider portfolio. I established quarterly planning across Loyalty Design and Research, bringing together Design, Research, Content, Product and Engineering to align priorities, assess capacity, review dependencies and agree realistic delivery commitments.
Shared Portfolio View
Created visibility across more than 30 initiatives, helping teams understand priorities, progress and how work connected across the wider ecosystem.
Capacity & Prioritisation
Connected roadmap ambitions with available design capacity, enabling more realistic conversations about sequencing, scope and trade-offs.
Dependencies & Risk
Created regular opportunities to surface blockers, cross-squad dependencies and delivery risks before they affected customer commitments.
Delivery governance
Established and maintained Jira processes for Design and Research, reducing dependency on reactive status chasing and creating a clearer record of priorities, decisions and actions.
Visuals here:
Quarterly planning board | Portfolio initiative view | Capacity or allocation view | Jira or delivery-governance example
Aligning the Clubcard experience
Portfolio visibility improved how teams planned. The next challenge was helping teams make decisions in the context of the wider customer experience rather than treating each proposition as an isolated product. I helped create shared frameworks, reusable capabilities and ecosystem-level views that allowed teams to align around customer value across Clubcard.
Service transformation
Created a shared way of understanding and organising Clubcard value across propositions and journeys, helping teams identify connections, duplication and opportunities across the ecosystem.
Loyalty as a Service
Supported the development of reusable loyalty capabilities that could surface Clubcard value within broader Tesco journeys, reducing the need for teams to create isolated solutions. The current Loyalty OKRs measure engagement with these capabilities across homepage, coupon and points experiences.
Ecosystem alignment
Brought together propositions, journeys and roadmaps around a shared view of customer value, supporting more connected decisions across Wallet, Points, Coupons, Savings, Missions and Reward Partners.
Experience quality
Established clear expectations for consistency, interaction quality and execution across Clubcard touchpoints. Your current leadership CV also positions this as defining shared frameworks and reusable capabilities that enable propositions to scale more consistently.
Visuals here:
Clubcard ecosystem map | Service-transformation framework | Loyalty as a Service model | Connected journey or capability map
Building team capability
Sustaining quality across a large portfolio required investment in the team as well as the operating model. I built an environment that combined support and psychological safety with clear expectations around quality, ownership and delivery. My approach adapted to individual needs while keeping accountability and customer outcomes visible.
Team growth and onboarding
Supported recruitment, onboarding and team movements to maintain capability across squads. Feedback highlighted that this support helped new designers understand priorities and become effective more quickly.
Coaching and development
Used regular one-to-ones, PDPs, feedback and stretch opportunities to support progression, strengthen strategic thinking and build confidence across the team.
Quality and collaboration
Maintained Design Check-ins, peer reviews, quarterly planning, delivery forums and cross-squad discussions to improve quality, knowledge sharing and shared ownership.
Sustainable delivery
Used capacity discussions and portfolio visibility to identify overextension earlier, protect focus and help team members prioritise sustainable delivery.
Visuals here:
Team structure or growth visual | Design critique or peer-review rhythm | Onboarding hub | Quality or QA framework
Organisational outcomes
The result was not simply a new planning process. It was a more visible and connected way of leading design across Loyalty.
Priorities and dependencies became easier to understand across squads
Capacity and delivery risks could be addressed earlier
Teams gained a clearer view of the wider Clubcard ecosystem
Planning became more consistent across Design and Research
Customer commitments remained on track during organisational change
Portfolio ownership transitioned without losing delivery continuity
Reflection
Leading Digital Clubcard reinforced that scaling design is not about adding process for its own sake. It is about creating the clarity, shared context and trust that allow teams to make better decisions independently.
The most valuable leadership interventions connected three things that had previously been treated separately: portfolio visibility, customer-experience alignment and team capability. Together, they created stronger conditions for consistently delivering customer value across a complex loyalty ecosystem.