[RUSSIAN] Bank CentrCredit 2023-2025. Management Case Study
Top-3 bank in Kazakhstan with 1.5 million active users. The bank was actively undergoing transformation. Top management made a decision to change the bank's positioning, move away from current technologies and completely revamp the app. Movement began from Classic Banking → SuperApp FinTech. Bank website: BCC.KZ
Joined as Senior Product Designer without management experience. Was immediately given a large team of designers and tasked with conducting a redesign in the shortest possible timeframe. Had to quickly learn how to establish processes and be an effective manager
Restructured a team of 15 designers from monolith to matrix structure — each designer now worked within a product team and deeply understood their domain. Simultaneously led the complete redesign of the application and other services, introduced effective design team management tools. Learned a lot
In 3 months grew from Senior Product Designer to Head of Product Design, beating out 20 candidates. Locally improved the design team's maturity level from "Survival" to "Systematic". Led and completed the full redesign of the application, website, and internal products. BCC.KZ became the best Mobile Banking according to Markswebb
Started with personal one-to-one meetings with all 15 designers. Needed to understand the real picture — what hurts, what blocks their work, what they're unhappy with. Created a living document with all the problems and systematically solved them. This helped quickly earn the team's trust and understand where to start making changes.
| What was hurting designers → | Solution → | Result |
|---|---|---|
| "I'm doing three times more tasks than my colleague next to me, but I don't understand why. He has the same skills, same salary, but he's calmly drinking coffee while I'm burning in deadlines.” | Implemented Story Points — now everyone sees their workload in percentages. Transparent and fair. | Workload balanced out. Set up a shared Kanban board — everyone sees all tasks. Complaints about uneven distribution disappeared. |
| "Been working for two years, and no one explains how to grow” | Aligned salaries with actual designer levels. Had to let go of those who didn't match. Tough, but fair. Created initial grading system | Grading system started working. Even if only within the team for now, but everyone knows their level and where to grow next. |
| "Constantly reworking because I don't know what neighboring teams are doing” | Launched weekly syncs and split the team into 3 mini-groups. Now everyone knows who's doing what. | The team came alive. Designers started doing cross-reviews, helping each other. No one works in a vacuum anymore. |
| "Tasks for three people, but only one designer. Finishing work late. All day in tension and can't focus because of multiple parallel tasks” | Freed designers with high burnout risk from repetitive tasks. Less workload + more creative and open-ended tasks | Motivation increased. Gave complex tasks to strong designers, removed routine. People are loving their work. |
| "Can't work with manager A anymore — fed up. They set tasks incorrectly” | Wrote a clear guide for PMs on working with designers. | Conflicts resolved. Reshuffled people between teams, started participating in difficult negotiations as a mediator. |
| "Waiting a week for design reviews, everything is blocked!” | Stopped being a bottleneck. Divided tasks into 4 types — critical ones I review myself, delegated the rest to team leads. | Delivery speed +30%. Removed bottlenecks — designs reach development faster. |
| "Throwing newcomers into battle without preparation — figure it out yourselves” | Created a PDF guide for newcomers. Simple, but it works — people get into context in a couple of days | Onboarding in 3 days. Newcomers get into work almost immediately, not wandering around for weeks. |
The design workflow was in complete chaos. No guidelines, everyone managed Figma however they wanted. Designers worked in "got requirements from product —> drew it —> handed it over" mode. The team was stuck at a reactive level, only putting out fires, not proposing solutions. UX tests were conducted, but their results were ignored, closing business requirements was more important