The Challenge
In my first month as Principal UX Designer at ResMan, I inherited our highest-priority project: deliver budgeting software for our largest enterprise client by their 2022 budget season deadline, or lose them entirely. Leadership believed the project was 70% complete. My assessment revealed a different reality. The previous designer had moved on, and I was brought in to complete what appeared to be nearly-finished work. After reviewing the design files and meeting with subject matter experts, I realized there wasn’t much to work with. What existed was a few screens that hadn’t been developed far enough to be viable. The reality was closer to zero.
"The reality was closer to zero."
The team had been working under intense pressure — competing organizational priorities, COVID disruptions, tight deadlines — and recognized the issues but weren’t sure how to address them. I was one month into my role, on my first major project, and I needed to tell leadership we had to start over.
The Intervention
The team had identified the same issues I was seeing, but no one wanted to be the person saying “this won’t work” on a high-visibility project. As the new person, I could see the situation clearly: staying silent meant watching the project fail and the client leave. Speaking up meant risking relationships I’d just started building. I addressed this directly with the team before going to leadership. I explained my assessment, my intention to escalate to the CTO and SVP of Product, and why I believed it was necessary. I made clear I was taking personal accountability — if I was wrong about the severity, that was on me.
"If I was wrong about the severity, that was on me."
I brought my assessment to the CTO and SVP of Product with evidence: the design files, the gap between where leadership believed the project was and where it actually stood, and what it would take to deliver something viable. They validated directly with the team after creating explicit psychological safety around honest feedback. The team confirmed my assessment and identified additional development resources needed. Resources were switfly approved. Elizabeth Francisco — company co-founder and President — personally committed to working closely with the team throughout the seven-month project, an unprecedented allocation of executive time that signaled its strategic importance. An additional Product Manager with budgeting domain expertise joined to support requirements. Development resources expanded. The project officially restarted with the right team, the right approach, and clear executive commitment.
The Approach
The fundamental challenge was creating budgeting software accessible to users with varying levels of financial expertise — from newer contributors to experienced budget managers. What little existed of the previous approach had assumed users already understood budgeting — complex formulas, financial terminology, spreadsheet-style interfaces. Our solution needed to be powerful enough for experienced budget managers while accessible to newer contributors. And we had seven months to build it from scratch. Over seven months of near-daily working sessions with Elizabeth and regular collaboration with Caroline Lawes (Product Manager with budgeting domain expertise), we translated complex financial workflows into accessible design patterns. I had no prior experience designing budgeting software, so I studied fundamentals independently — budgeting concepts, market analysis, domain knowledge — to build the foundation I needed. Working closely with the development team, we validated technical feasibility and refined the solution under constant time pressure. The breakthrough was making complex budget calculations accessible through natural language. Instead of requiring users to construct spreadsheet formulas or understand technical syntax, they could express budget logic in plain terms the system interpreted — turning what had been an Excel-expert-only capability into something accessible to contributors across skill levels.
“Turning what had been an Excel-expert-only capability into something accessible to contributors across skill levels.”
This informed the entire design: how users created budgets across multiple properties, how teams collaborated to review and approve them, how they compared data across portfolios to identify issues. Every interaction pattern and workflow step had to maintain this balance — sophisticated enough for enterprise-scale financial planning, intuitive enough for property managers focused on operations.
The Impact
We delievered for the 2022 budget season deadline. The client stayed.
"We delivered for the 2022 budget season deadline."
One of ResMan’s longest-standing clients — managing thousands of units — specifically called out BudgetsPro’s intuitiveness and adaptability, noting it solved complexity that other budgeting solutions made unnecessarily difficult. Four years later, the solution remains prominently featured in company marketing materials and continues serving customers. At ResMan’s inaugural industry conference — a 400-person event attended by customers, partners, and competitors — the CEO specifically highlighted BudgetsPro as a strategic achievement. While the credit belonged to the entire team, he called out my design leadership by name. What we built worked because the right people were in the room and given the support they needed to do their best work.
The Takeaways
You don’t need expertise to be honest.
I didn’t have time to become a budgeting expert before starting, so I used the time I had: studying independently, building domain knowledge, assessing whether the existing approach could work. If I was going to escalate, I needed a case built on understanding, not intuition.
Make it easy to say yes.
Gather evidence first, try to solve it with available resources, enlist allies who see the same issues, then escalate — but only when necessary. When I escalated to the CTO and SVP of Product, they could validate my assessment with the team in minutes. The foundation I’d built made validation simple.
Hope isn't a strategy.
The team had identified the same issues but organizational dynamics made escalation difficult. I almost stayed silent myself. But I’d rather risk being wrong about the severity than watch us fail without saying anything. When you see something that could cause catastrophic failure, directness isn’t optional — it’s essential.
When you see it, you own it.
I wasn’t certain we could deliver a new solution in seven months, but I was certain about the risk of not trying. My job was to see it clearly and say it directly — then deliver when leadership backed us.
The BudgetsPro work proved what I bring to every project: see the problem clearly, say it directly, then deliver.