During my tenure at Cheil, I had the opportunity to serve as an AEM Component Manager while also fulfilling my responsibilities as a UX Designer. Samsung's website is managed through the Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) CMS, which primarily utilised global components developed by HQ in Seoul.

A key challenge emerged when European regions required specific components not included in the global component library. To address these needs, regions had to submit requests to me, the Component Manager. I would review each request to determine if existing components could be adapted to meet their needs and assess whether the component warranted development. This involved evaluating the request to ensure it wasn't a one-off requirement and justifying the resource investment required for development. Once assessed, I would forward the request to HQ for development, which often resulted in a wait time of up to two months before work on new components even began.

The approach was straightforward but required a significant amount of tasks and coordination:

1) Prioritisation: I conducted extensive meetings with Samsung stakeholders, presenting all the components requested by local regions and prioritising them based on their defined importance.

2) Training and Collaboration: I undertook a business trip to Seoul to receive training on the HQ Component Build Process, which was necessary to adapt this process for Europe’s HQ. During the trip, I was introduced to an external development company in Seoul, with whom I worked closely to develop the components once the design process was completed on our end (UK).

3) Process Development: I developed a European work process for component development, which I presented to the stakeholders. I then shared this new European component build process with all local subsidiaries across Europe.

To kick-start this new process and get things running, after the business trip to Seoul where we defined realistic timelines and resources, I proposed we begin with three static components with a development time of one month, including the design phase. The components proposed to the stakeholders were not highly advanced or dynamic, but they were still a high priority, especially for local regions when launching regular campaigns on their Samsung websites.

The biggest challenges for me during this task were as follows:

1) Managing Requests: Sixteen subsidiaries were requesting components through JIRA, and it was my job to attend weekly meetings with the Samsung stakeholders to propose the priority list. Aligning everyone’s needs and priorities was very challenging.

2) Creating Functional Requirement Documents (FRDs): I was responsible for creating FRDs for the developers to refer to when developing the components. As it was my first time creating such a technical document, the learning curve was quite steep. However, it was a very good opportunity to learn in a fast-paced environment.