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.

Flex Your Super Powers: When a Design Ops Team Scales to Power CX
Gold
Wednesday, September 29, 2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Share the love for this talk
Flex Your Super Powers: When a Design Ops Team Scales to Power CX
Speakers: Kate Koch and Jean-Claire Fitschen
Link:

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."

Ask the Rosenbot
Samuel Proulx
From Standards to Innovation: Why Inclusive Design Wins
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Cassandra Piester
Developing and Deploying Your Design Operations Strategy
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Dan Saffer
Why AI projects fail (and what we can do about it)
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Crystal Philcox
The Many Faces of Operations
2017 • DesignOps Summit 2017
Gold
Bria Alexander
Reflect and Chart Forward
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Laine Riley Prokay
How DesignOps can Drive Inclusive Career Ladders for All
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Sharbani Dhar
Breathing Room for Delight
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Candace Myers
Standardizing Design at Scale
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Ted Neward
Theme 4: Enterprise Organizational Journey
2019 • Enterprise Experience 2019
Gold
Jon Fukuda
The Big Question about Innovation: A Panel Discussion
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
John Cutler
Oxbows, Rivers, and Estuaries: How to navigate the currents of change (without burning out)
2024 • Advancing Service Design 2024
Gold
JP Allen
Navigating the UX Tools Landscape
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
John Calhoun
Have we Reached Our Peak? Spotting the Next Mountain For DesignOps to Climb
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Amy Jiménez Márquez
The Atypical UX Manager Path
2020 • Enterprise Community
Jane Davis
Strategic Shifts and Innovations in User Research: Navigating Challenges and Opportunities
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Nicole Umphress
Delivering Design Education During a Global Pandemic: Lessons Learned
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold

More Videos

Nalini P. Kotamraju

"Sometimes being a leader means making decisions that feel like high stakes gambling with incomplete data."

Nalini P. Kotamraju

Two Jobs in One: Being a “Leader who is a Researcher” and a “Researcher who is a Leader"

March 10, 2021

Jay Bustamante

"You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube once biased AI harms your brand or users."

Jay Bustamante

Navigating the Ethical Frontier: DesignOps Strategies for Responsible AI Innovation

October 2, 2023

Aditi Ruiz

"Empathy mapping uses sensory metaphors but can exclude people with disabilities if we’re not careful."

Aditi Ruiz Christian Crumlish Farid Sabitov

Pulse Check: Empathy Mapping Your Product Manager, Pt. 2

December 6, 2022

Kelly Goto

"We don’t have time for ethnography, yet executives still don’t have answers without it."

Kelly Goto

Emotion Economy: Ethnography as Corporate Strategy

May 13, 2015

Bill Scott

"Features eventually become barnacles that are impossible to scrape off the boat."

Bill Scott

Lean Engineering: Engineering for Learning and Experimentation in the Enterprise

May 14, 2015

Dave Hoffer

"The introvert’s edge is that they research, plan, and have a strategy for meaningful conversations."

Dave Hoffer Joanne Weaver

UX Job Search AMA #2 with Joanne Weaver and Dave Hoffer

May 21, 2025

Jill Fruchter

"Metrics become lagging indicators, consequences of what’s happening upstream in the customer experience."

Jill Fruchter

Inconvenient Insights: The Researcher's Role is to Stay Curious

March 29, 2023

Russ Unger

"Waiting and vague communication during hiring is a painful guessing game for candidates."

Russ Unger

Onboarding: The Ecosystem, not the Afterthought

November 7, 2017

Saara Kamppari-Miller

"You have to repeat your message about inclusion multiple times before people really hear it and change happens."

Saara Kamppari-Miller

Inclusive Design is DesignOps

September 29, 2021