DesignOps in Wonderland
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
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Adopting an Agile mindset gradually helps small experience teams evolve and gain organizational trust.
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Establishing 'full kit teams' that include product owners, engineers, and designers improves product outcomes.
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Saying no strategically is essential to protect team capacity and focus on high-value work.
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User-centered design was initially new to the organization and needed to be proven through small wins.
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Aligning design sprint cycles with engineering sprints creates a common language and better collaboration.
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Centralizing operational functions (governance, tools, contracting) within design ops frees design teams to focus on creativity.
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Creating transparent, collaborative intake and backlog prioritization processes builds credibility among stakeholders.
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Balancing organizational timelines ('Wonderland time') with design needs requires incremental process improvements.
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Proactive lead time planning allows design teams to adhere to user-centered design within Agile delivery constraints.
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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."
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