PIPELINE TAKEOFF · BETA TO GA · SIMPSON STRONG-TIE
ABOUT THIS PROJECT
The beta worked, and that raised a harder question: would professional estimators trust it on a real project? I set out to find what had to be true before they would. I ran the readiness research, brought in an outside expert as the benchmark, and facilitated the prioritization that set the GA scope with my PM and engineering lead. Then I designed what made the cut: refinement, review, and handoff.
MY ROLE
Lead Designer. Research, MoSCoW facilitation, design through GA, with the PM and engineering lead.
PRODUCT
B2B · Construction estimating · Web app
TIMELINE
October 2024 – Early 2025
RESULT
3.6 / 5 readiness to GA · Every Build Now item shipped
The Challenge
What would it actually take for professionals to trust PTO from takeoff through handoff?
GOAL
Decide what had to ship before professionals would run a real job in PTO, and defer the rest without losing it. The business reason was clear: a GA product sells as part of the platform; a beta sells as a promise.
PROBLEM
The product stopped at measuring, but the job didn’t. After a takeoff was done, estimators refined it, reviewers checked it against the plans, and someone marked it up for the customer. All of that was happening outside PTO.
SUCCESS DEFINITION
A professional finishes a real project in PTO, from takeoff through handoff, without a second tool. The GA bar is written down and agreed by the tripod, so later requests have an answer. Everything marked Build Now ships before GA.
The Solution
Carried the workflow past measuring, into refinement, review, and handoff, and drew the GA line with the tripod.
I kept gathering feedback from early-access users and added an outside benchmark: a founder of the takeoff tool most estimators already use, reviewing PTO against professional practice. That gave us a gap list no internal test could have produced. The bigger change was looking past the estimator. Once a takeoff was done, reviewers checked it, refined it, and marked it up for the customer. Designing for those steps is what moved PTO from a measuring tool to something a job could be handed off from.
Annotations, a legend, and multiple tabs. The plan is ready to hand off without leaving PTO.
Research
Where did the workflow still break between takeoff and handoff?
Same study structure as Part 1 so I could compare: ten participants, six internal estimating experts and four external customers, working on their own projects for one to two weeks, then moderated interviews. This time I was looking for what stood between the beta and production use, not usability issues. One external participant had built takeoff software professionally, which let us test PTO against industry convention rather than our own opinion.
FEATURES WORKED, BUT STILL COST EFFORT
Every job paid the same small taxes: attributes set through a dialog, known dimensions drawn by hand.
THE PLAN IS THE HANDOFF
Notes, callouts, and a legend had to live on the takeoff itself, or the work left PTO to get finished.
REVIEWERS NEEDED SEVERAL PAGES OPEN AT ONCE
They were checking a takeoff against a handful of sheets, in separate browser windows.
4,000 KEY MEASURES: A FILTERING PROBLEM, NOT A LIST PROBLEM
A key measure is a saved material definition. Corporate libraries hold thousands, and every user saw all of them.
Prioritization
What had to improve before GA, and what could wait?
I ran a MoSCoW workshop with my PM and engineering lead, working the full gap list into a shared definition of what blocked GA, what would strengthen the workflow, and what we could consciously defer. Running it as a working session rather than presenting a recommendation meant the three of us left with decisions we’d made together. Research became an input to investment decisions, not a usability backlog.
Supporting the work from refinement through handoff
Place a point, press an arrow, type the distance. No mouse needed.
Refining what beta users already relied on
Beta use showed where measuring needed more precision: attributes set in context, and a way to draw a known dimension without the mouse.
The Sections tab filtered to this project: twelve materials instead of thousands.
Finding the right material without scrolling through thousands
A corporate library can hold more than 4,000 saved material definitions. Project filtering shows only the ones this job uses; the library itself doesn’t change.
Four sheets open as tabs in one window.
The pages that matter stay open
Reviewers were checking a takeoff against several sheets in separate browser windows. Tabs keep the pages that matter open in one window, for estimators cross-referencing while they measure and reviewers checking the finished work.
A callout and legend on the plan, ready to hand to a customer.
The markup is the record: what was measured, by whom, and why
Reviewers leave callouts and notes right on the plan, with a legend that explains what was measured, so a takeoff can go to a customer without leaving PTO.
Decision held under pressure
Deferring gaps the most credible voice in the room had named.
The hardest items to defer were the ones the outside expert called table stakes: Hip & Valley, the Arc Tool, Linear Wall Area. He had built the tool our customers already used, and no one in the room could out-argue that on completeness.
His credential was real, but it wasn’t the question. The question was whether those tools blocked the work most estimators do every day, and they didn’t: none of them comes up daily, each has a workaround, and a bid doesn’t need to be exact to the inch to win. We kept them deferred, and the list we wrote that day became the answer to every later “can we also add” conversation.
The Outcome
Turning readiness research into product and roadmap decisions
3.6 / 5
GA readiness score before this phase
GA
PTO reached general availability, with every feature in Final Solution shipped
STAKEHOLDER IMPACT
Every Build Now item shipped before GA, and GA let PTO be sold to new customers as part of the platform rather than as a beta next to a third-party tool. The MoSCoW list outlived the workshop: new requests got the same Build Now, Build Next, Defer answer instead of a new debate.
RESEARCH VALUE
The 3.6 / 5 readiness score gave us an honest starting line and changed the question from “do users like it?” to “can professionals work in it?” The outside expert is what made that measurable; our internal testing had passed the measurement engine long before.
HOW MY ROLE EVOLVED
Across the two releases my role shifted from fixing interaction problems to running the research loop the tripod used to decide what to build next: plan the studies, turn the evidence into direction, facilitate prioritization, then design what we decided.
