Flex Your Super Powers: When a Design Ops Team Scales to Power CX
Summary
Join the Verizon CX Design Ops team for an interactive session about uncovering your super powers, recognizing your kryptonite and flexing your skills to power a growing, global team.
Key Insights
-
•
Verizon CX Ops transformed from a design ops team to a global CX operations team powering 300+ roles across the enterprise.
-
•
Super speed represents rapid onboarding and resource planning to match the right designers to priority projects quickly.
-
•
Telepathy is a metaphor for proactive and consistent communication, resource capacity planning, and recruitment process improvements.
-
•
Super gadgets include operational tools like Jira, Airtable, and dynamic reporting, critical for scaling CX operations.
-
•
Flight symbolizes adopting multiple frameworks (predictive, agile, hybrid) and flexible working at global scale.
-
•
Super intelligence is embodied by CX Ops acting as a knowledge hub, oversharing communications to avoid gaps.
-
•
Super strength is demonstrated by strong cross-team partnerships and repeatable scalable processes that enhance customer experience quality.
-
•
Capacity planning in uncertain environments relies heavily on design systems, iterative planning, and quarterly forecasts with business partners.
-
•
Defining and tracking anti-patterns helps identify inefficiencies, such as ineffective meetings or communication breakdowns, enabling quick corrective action.
-
•
Crypto nights like burnout, silos, and too many priorities are actively managed through transparency, communication, and team support.
Notable Quotes
"We are super ops — powering 300 plus designers, researchers, and strategists globally."
"One of our superpowers is super speed: moving at the speed of light almost in onboarding and resource planning."
"Telepathy means mind-reading—proactive solutions through expanded resource capacity planning and recruitment."
"Super gadgets are our operational tools that we get really geeky about, like Jira and Airtable."
"Flight means adopting multiple models—predictive, agile, hybrid—to empower design at global scale."
"As the keepers and gatherers of knowledge, we empower others by sharing and sometimes over-sharing communications."
"Our super strength comes from partnerships and scalable, repeatable processes."
"We have crypto nights like people pleasing, perfectionism, silos, and burnout—which we watch out for carefully."
"Capacity planning is always through ever-changing uncertainty, requiring quarterly resource planning and business partnership."
"Defining anti-patterns helps us quickly identify and remedy issues like ineffective meetings or misaligned priorities."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"We have to work with the organization culture, not against it, and see what sticks."
Mark BoultonOps without Designers
November 7, 2018
"I was talking with a person who said I’m like an idea machine, a 24-7 idea machine. The reply was immediate. It isn’t, you get used up and spat out."
Dr. Karl JeffriesThe Science of Creativity for DesignOps
January 8, 2024
"The pandemic collapsed many roles onto fewer shoulders without the usual context switches, amplifying burnout risk."
Julie Gitlin Esther RaiceDesign as an Agent of Digital Transformation at JPMC
June 9, 2021
"Without real business world experience, most leaders struggle with the overwhelming amount of demands placed on them."
Dave Malouf Adrienne Allnutt Jon Fukuda Dominique WardThe Future of DesignOps
January 8, 2024
"One of my biggest pet peeves is biased questions; I hate the term validation, I prefer evaluation."
Mike OrenImproving Democratized Research with CustomGPTs and Gems
February 25, 2026
"We tried hybrid sessions but quickly learned splitting virtual and in-person was better for experience."
Elizabeth Sklar Jessica ShengCo-creating research enablement with your tech org: a case study
March 10, 2026
"I started spending more time understanding agent processes at a deeper level beyond just answering tactical questions."
Kayla Farrell Chelsey Glasson Sean Fitzell Jared LeClercWhat It's Like To Be a User Researcher at Compass
March 12, 2021
"Acknowledging that you can’t get other people to do things is truly the path to freedom."
Matt LeMayYou Don’t “Get” Anyone to Do Anything
December 6, 2022
"Design ops job descriptions change every three to six months depending on the company’s needs."
Bria Alexander Meredith Black Tim GilliganState of DesignOps Panel
October 1, 2021