Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

DesignOps in Wonderland
Gold
Thursday, October 24, 2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Share the love for this talk
DesignOps in Wonderland
Speakers: Carla Casariego and Sarah Spencer
Link:

Summary

Experience the fantastical world of navigating rabbit holes, unlocking doors with hidden keys, and racing against the clock as Carla Casariego and Sarah Spencer take you through their adventures in creating and sustaining an agile DesignOps org at Express Scripts.

Key Insights

  • Adopting an Agile mindset gradually helps small experience teams evolve and gain organizational trust.

  • Establishing 'full kit teams' that include product owners, engineers, and designers improves product outcomes.

  • Saying no strategically is essential to protect team capacity and focus on high-value work.

  • User-centered design was initially new to the organization and needed to be proven through small wins.

  • Aligning design sprint cycles with engineering sprints creates a common language and better collaboration.

  • Centralizing operational functions (governance, tools, contracting) within design ops frees design teams to focus on creativity.

  • Creating transparent, collaborative intake and backlog prioritization processes builds credibility among stakeholders.

  • Balancing organizational timelines ('Wonderland time') with design needs requires incremental process improvements.

  • Proactive lead time planning allows design teams to adhere to user-centered design within Agile delivery constraints.

  • Continuous learning from internal partners and external design ops communities fuels meaningful evolution.

Notable Quotes

"A tea party of one can really be very lonely, so we decided to seek out some friends to make our tea party more fun."

"We really had to go into it with an adaptable mindset and know when to drink the potion or eat the cake to grow or shrink."

"When we started, user-centered design was a relatively new concept to the organization."

"The term full kit team was coined because you needed the full set of people to produce exceptional experiences."

"Say no — that was really hard, but when you say no, you’re saying yes to the right things."

"Design sprint 76 just kicked off yesterday, and the calendar lives on to align as best we can with software engineering."

"A lot of things we said yes to didn’t necessarily have value to the member or the company — we had to challenge that."

"We created a collaborative intake where we work together to understand what’s the most important thing."

"Our journey into Wonderland has been wild, wonderful, and requires constant reflection and looking outward for inspiration."

"Being small and not embedded into every team means we constantly have to remind partners of the space design needs to create exceptional experiences."

Ask the Rosenbot
Bob Baxley
Theme 4: Discussion
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Kaitlin Tasker
Fast and Fearless Inclusive Research
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Taylor Jennings
Repository Retrospective: Learnings from Introducing a Central Place for UX Research
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Peter Levin
Solve a Problem Here, Transform a Strategy There: Research as an Occasion for Expanding Organizational Possibility
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Sam Proulx
Accessibility: An Opportunity to Innovate
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Alana Washington
Theme 1: Introduction and Provocation
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Briana Thomas
The Quiet Force: Uncovering Hidden Leadership in High-Impact Design Teams
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Kelly Goto
Emotion Economy: Ethnography as Corporate Strategy
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Matt Duignan
Atomizing Research: Trend or Trap
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Marc Rettig
Discussion
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Dan Willis
Enterprise Storytelling Sessions
2016 • Enterprise UX 2016
Gold
Megan Blocker
Theme 2 Intro
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Abby Covert
Stuck? Diagrams Help
2022 • DesignOps Community
Mackenzie Cockram
Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Research from Discovery to Live
2022 • QuantQual Interest Group
John Calhoun
Have we Reached Our Peak? Spotting the Next Mountain For DesignOps to Climb
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Gillian Salerno-Rebic
Redefining Speed and Scale: How Accenture’s GrowthOS Uses AI-Simulated Insights to Reduce Risk and Accelerate Innovation
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold

More Videos

Nalini Kotamraju

"For the first time, I was able to advocate for funding directly for the research function at high executive levels."

Nalini Kotamraju

Research After UX

March 25, 2024

Dean Broadley

"If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together."

Dean Broadley

Not Black Enough to be White

January 8, 2024

Denise Jacobs

"We’re not going for perfection. We’re going for excellence and change."

Denise Jacobs Nancy Douyon Renee Reid Lisa Welchman

Interactive Keynote: Social Change by Design

January 8, 2024

Kim Fellman Cohen

"If you don’t have the support you need—budget, time, people—your program is at high risk of failure."

Kim Fellman Cohen

Measuring the Designer Experience

October 23, 2019

George Aye

"Every major brand has a dark side brought to you by design on purpose, 40 hours a week."

George Aye

That Quiet Little Voice: When Design and Ethics Collide

November 16, 2022

Nathan Curtis

"Sometimes alignment work isn’t enjoyable, but it’s part of the job for design system success."

Nathan Curtis

Beyond the Toolkit: Spreading a System Across People & Products

June 9, 2016

Greg Petroff

"Real estate transactions are among the top five life events in terms of emotional significance for people."

Greg Petroff

The Compass Mission

March 10, 2021

Chloe Amos-Edkins

"We have this collective superpower navigating the breadth and depth of human experience across cultures."

Chloe Amos-Edkins

A Cultural Approach: Research in the Context of Glocalisation

March 27, 2023

Mackenzie Cockram

"Some stakeholders still prefer their beliefs to data, even in academia."

Mackenzie Cockram Sara Branco Cunha Ian Franklin

Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Research from Discovery to Live

December 16, 2022