Day 1–The Future of ReOps as a Strategic Function: A Roadmap for Getting There

— Hello! I have over 15 years of experience, with 18 years in product deevelopment wearing multiple hats, and as UX researcher, focused on enterprise research

  • Want to inspire you to open your mind, and think of future of research strategy
  • I want you to think of reops as enabling research at company wide level, along with recruitment and repositories

— Will start with overview of reops

  • Insights gained from obseriving research process and industry trends
    • Will help clarify urgency and stakes
  • Key programs I’ve executed and have been a part of that will redefine research ops and the talent that can do it

— So long as you can keep an open mind, we will go far

— I’ll start with gratitude, and a definition

  • ReOps works to scale research across the organization

 

 

— I want to imagine future ReOps that provides critical insight on research practice, to move beyond processes and support, but as a strategic partner

  • Taking role of stepping back, and looking our work, decisions, and interactions with stakeholders and areas of improvement

— It will help us increase breadth of research strategy

— As we think about ops, we can consider principle of Sankofa of what we will be leaving behind

  • UXR has come long way to get seat at table, but we will be challenged with more critical challenges in workspace
    • Who will measure how it impacts workflows and how it will be more diverse and critical
      • Who will examine alignment?
        • Corporate leaders will continue to ask for more

 

 

— As mentioned, spent 18 years in industry, but at heart an applied anthropologist

  • Worn multiple hats over the years

 

— Going through research informingn design decisions

  • Still trying to communicate strategic value we have— as corporate leaders are still not getting it

— ReOps has re-emerged as being stuck in process and project layer, as opposed to broader portfolio layer

— Risk of limited views on roles and being typed as doing XYZ

  • Perception of assumptions of what research is, what it’s not, can be quite impactful and can influence morale— and show up as functional inequality

 

— Industry partners agree with this assessment

  • McKinsey found even corporate leaders, don’t know how to integrate design leaders through org

— There are a number of orgs and solutions

  • Broader worldview of design-leaders, and imagining them outside of design

— Sharing ownership with design leaders, and impacting revenue of product

  • Not company wide strategy and, using more operational metrics to get view into the ground

— Idea of reflexive discourse, as there is lot of work of having seat at the table

— We also have various reckonings, and moving teams out

  • Re-emergence for ReOPs and strategy

 

— Out of all these reckonings and debates, I think there is a moment for ReOps to re-emerge

 

— Throughout presentation today, I hopefully can open your mind to ReOps as strategic partner and reflect deeply on what exists

 

— I think today, we are focusing on solving clear problems, user research infrastructure and doing research projects

  • But we have limited visibility of metrics into end-to-end process
  • Quite a bit of insights generated, but people are looking to connect dots and decisions at strategy level

— Unsure where to integrate info we get within the company

 

— Work is not getting easier for researchers, so morale keeps getting low

  • People come in and ask: What’s the point?

 

— Focus on research integration, activation, and programs that focus on business and corporate strategy

 

— So let’s think how we can use ReOps?

  • How to park insights you discover, across the org.
    • At large company size, you can’t figure out all opportunities to find things

— Helping with stakeholder way-finding, and activation opportunities

  • I know, you think UXR needs to do this, but having someone to help doesn’t hurt

— You’ll find more opportunity and barriers you don’t know about

 

— For business strategy

  • ReOps can help you understand entire research process, by measuring it more critically, and assisting with research planning and execution

— Number of projects, projects closed, and if program operation team took it further, and additional columns around organizational structure and impact of that to research velocity

  • Researchers have presented via email and team meeting, and responses made, and why— imagine doing this for all projects and programs
    • You will have data to engage in that conversation
  • Imagine program teams owning that for you

— Can help understand stakeholder support and shared accountability, but are we telling that ownership?

  • Every research leader could be talked about phase differently and imaginging planning process from end-to-end

 

— What about corporate strategy:

  • Imagine director understanding what ‘good’ looks like, and what it means, relative to a baseline?

— Measuring research maturity and high-research, slow, and low research

  • Clarifying what these terms mean from leaderhsip perspectives
    • i.e. What is impact of ‘low’ research?

— Creates common baseline expectations and actions to take

 

— Want to step out of box, and talk about reflective lens

  • Imagine ReOps and UXR helping out with that and settling internal dynamics that pulls out reflexive lens of building great products

— Reflecting deeper on own roles and upskilling ReOps so that they feel confident to give insight

  • Look at product inclusion closer,

— Imagine program that can point out inclusion behaviors that are impacting product output

 

— Future opportunity for strategic research programs

  • Corporate level with data and insights and making research practice more visible and critical

 

— Who would do all this?

  • Embrace power of pivot and UXR looking for new challenges and opportunities that gave me space and runway

 

— How does framing ReOPs happen now?

  • Is it just UXR’s busy-work, but how do they do their career

 

— So let’s talk about REA the ReOps Hero. Her skills include:

  • Bird’s Eye View of Projects— And seeing all methods and quality being executed (like ‘break-up letter’ method)
  • Drive mature decision making and helping people come together with decisions and technical program manager to take operations to next level

 

— Lets’ imagine their reflexive powers and think about their birds-eye view

  • Great management consulting skills, have healing influence [managing ups and downs of the UXR process]

— These reflexive superpowers help position ReOps as future strategies to produce reckonings and reflections we need

 

— How to get there? So put together milestones there, and reflecting deeply on critical prompts

  • Think of who to bring in on practice tracker with people management and focusing on meaty challenge of research, as we have lot of data now

— Information on org support and response, and coming up into our own, and ultimately bringing in corporate intelligence to the company

 

— Finally, will ask you to open your mind, to have open insights

  • See common observations programs

— Remember that experts empower everyone

  1. 1Through different pivots with some that can be developed, and empowering org with your expert role
  2. Focus on directing up and across the chain, as stakeholders are eager to know how research wants to define
  3. Reflect and Restore and open your mind for critical reflexive nature
  4. Have a growth mindset

 

— That is it for the presentation

 

— We can connect via LinkedIn, and I hope we can continue to build on the conversation

 

Q&A

  1. Change can be hard at an identity-level. How to implement change as win and not threat?
    1. Build along with researchers and pilot it, and bring UXR along for the ride