Design Handoff and Developer Collaboration Questions

Start with a short checklist that defines "Ready for Handoff" (PM responsibility):

• Acceptance criteria written and linked to ticket
• User flows mapped and edge cases noted
• Priority, release target, and performance/security constraints called out

Required artifacts (delivered by Design and attached to the ticket):

• Interactive prototypes (stable build + version)
• High-fidelity screens with annotations (component states, constraints)
• Design tokens/specs: color/token names, spacing scale, type scale, iconography
• Component spec sheet: props, behavior, error states, analytics hooks
• Accessibility notes: ARIA roles, keyboard nav, color-contrast failures and alternatives
• Localization checklist if relevant

Ceremonies and timing:

• T–3 days: Design walkthrough with engineering + PM — demo flows, highlight trade-offs
• T–2 days: Asynchronous review period; engineers add comments to ticket/design system
• T–0: Handoff meeting to confirm acceptance criteria and unblock dev

Routing for clarifications:

• All questions posted in ticket thread with clear tags (design-question, blocking)
• Urgent blockers escalated via PM to designer; maintain 24-hour SLAs for responses in sprint
• Design owner assigns a single point-of-contact per feature to avoid ambiguity

PM role:

• Ensure acceptance criteria are complete and measurable
• Mediate trade-offs between scope/time/quality when clarifications arise
• Enforce the Ready checklist before sprint planning
• Track open design questions in sprint board and unblock via meetings or scope adjustments
• Validate first implementation against spec (design QA) and sign off before close

Extras/Best practices:

• Keep tokens in a shared, versioned source (Figma tokens / design system repo)
• Use small incremental PRs and component-level stories for early feedback
• Run a short post-handoff retro to capture friction and update the checklist to reduce future rework.