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
"Keep trying and iterating your design ops initiatives even if stakeholders resist at first."
Frances YllanaDesignOps–Leading the Path to Parity
April 27, 2023
"We always recommend starting with one method and adding another only when absolutely needed."
George Zhang Molly StevensUX Research Excellence Framework
March 11, 2021
"The COP became the beating heart of our project, enabling quick credibility and community excitement."
Alexia Cohen Adriane AckermanIncreasing Health Equity and Improving the Service Experience for Under-Served Latine Communities in Arizona
December 4, 2024
"I present myself as simply somebody who’s on this journey to figure it out."
Chris Geison Cristen Torrey Eric MahlstedtWhat is Research Strategy?: A Panel of Research Leaders Discuss this Emergent Question
March 4, 2021
"We design with our biases and subjectivities, so we must work with diverse stakeholders to avoid tunnel vision."
Paul Pangaro, PhDSystems Disciplines: Table Stakes for 21st Century Organizations
June 6, 2023
"Excel is great, but it’s not scalable when managing design operations at scale."
Farid SabitovTheme Four Intro
September 9, 2022
"Legacy applications linger because changing them is risk-ridden and a major undertaking."
Malini RaoLessons Learned from a 4-year Product Re-platforming Journey
June 9, 2021
"Sometimes minor questions don’t matter much, and AI can help get those out of the way so researchers focus on strategic work."
Taylor Jennings Alexis McNutt Unis Sydney LawsonResearch Debate Club
March 11, 2026
"Knowledge multiplies the more it is shared; enabling others makes your insights stronger, not your position weaker."
Jemma Ahmed Steve Carrod Chris Geison Dr. Shadi Janansefat Christopher NashDemocratization: Working with it, not against it [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
July 24, 2024
