Access Management Centre in Athena

Enterprise

System Design

As Athena scaled up, its hyper-manual user onboarding process became unsustainable. Leading Research and Design, I develop an access management solution that streamlined onboarding, reduced support tickets, and empowered users to manage their teams and resources efficiently.

Process

Define Business Goals

To ensure success, I collaborated with stakeholders to establish three key objectives:

Faster Onboarding – Improve user satisfaction, maintain partnership momentum, and scale efficiently.
Scalable & Adaptable System – Support evolving roles, business strategies, and future growth.
Refocused Responsibilities – Reduce IT burden, empower users to manage access, and enhance privacy controls.

B. Research & Discovery

With a flexible timeline, I conducted market research, analyzed existing systems, and identified key stakeholders, then collaborated with the Technical PO and PM to refine key workflows:

Team Setup – How do companies structure teams within access management?
Roles & Permissions – How are roles defined and permissions assigned?
Access Auditing – How do admins monitor and review user access?

We saw three key requirements emerged:

Hybrid Access Model – Combines role- and attribute-based controls for scalability and flexibility.
Modular & Versatile Design – Supports both internal operations and external teams.
Privacy & Security Focus – Ensures data protection, compliance, and user trust.

C. Stakeholder Interviews

As parts of the research planning, I determined key teams to involve in this process — people who are or will be impacted by the outcomes of this project.

System Admins – Developed existing access controls.
IT Team – Manages user onboarding and access requests.
Security Team – Ensures compliance with security regulations.
HR & Customer Ops – Handles internal and client access requests.

D. Define Key Challenges

Balancing Flexibility & Structure – Current systems are either too broad (Athena) or too restrictive (Powertrack). A flexible approach is needed.
User Access Challenges – Assigning users across multiple sites is inefficient, overwhelming IT. A self-service model would ease this.
Security & Compliance – SOC 2 and GDPR regulations require strict access controls.
Future Vision – Empower users with independent access management while keeping the system simple and flexible.

Design Exploration

Design Challenge & Mitigation

Our solution balances user needs and system scalability but requires longer implementation and foundational changes to the existing permission model.

This investment, though well-researched, faced resistance from the Development team due to misalignment with the Business Solutions team. To address this, I paused the Permission page design to gather more data before moving forward.

To ensure informed next steps, I facilitated discussions between both teams to evaluate trade-offs and consulted internal pro users to document risks and potential returns. This approach fosters alignment and ensures a well-supported design decision.