Summary
TIn their first 60 days at Zendesk, Briana and Christina, a 2 person design ops team, conducted a Program Manager Audit looking at these 3 key areas: People, Process, and Portfolio. 90 days later, Product Design has transformed from a siloed, disjointed team into a well-organized, collaborative environment with a unified tool strategy, inclusive team spaces and more focus on design craft. In this talk you will learn how to not only conduct a thorough and data-centric Program Manager Audit, but how to come in H.O.T. (Humble, Orchestrated, and Timely.)
Key Insights
-
•
New design ops members conducted a comprehensive people, practice, and portfolio audit within their first 30 days to identify improvement areas.
-
•
Ops-focused discussion guides differ from typical UX research guides by addressing distinct needs across leadership and design teams.
-
•
Effective ops work requires honest, transparent, and encouraging conversations to gather actionable feedback.
-
•
The effectiveness scale with seven criteria (audience, purpose, documentation, cadence, effectiveness, participation, culture) helps objectively evaluate meetings and rituals.
-
•
UX Weekly initially suffered from low strategic value, low engagement, and unsustainable slide-heavy formats, causing decline over time.
-
•
Grounding recommendations in real user feedback and data increases leadership buy-in and ensures relevant changes.
-
•
Project charters are vital for accountability, impact communication, and timely execution of ops initiatives.
-
•
Tailoring discussion guides and recommendations to different audience levels (VPs to individual designers) enhances relevance.
-
•
Maintaining cultural elements like greetings and community connection strengthens team engagement during meetings.
-
•
Ops roles serve as linchpins balancing competing priorities and synthesizing diverse inputs into cohesive strategies.
Notable Quotes
"When design ops comes in hot, it means honest, orchestrated, and timely."
"We had 80 designers attending UX Weekly and trying to get through 64 slides in one hour. It wasn’t sustainable."
"Dogs and spam started filling the slides. That was a sign this meeting wasn’t working anymore."
"An ops-focused discussion guide helps us gather feedback from leadership and designers so our recommendations meet their needs."
"Our effectiveness scale measured audience, purpose, documentation, cadence, effectiveness, participation, and culture to rate meetings."
"We unapologetically move forward when high-level stakeholders miss deadlines, but also collect feedback via surveys."
"The project charter is our best friend for accountability, impact, and timelines."
"You need to be laser-focused as ops people—we get asked to do too many things otherwise."
"We shifted UX Weekly to Product Design Biweekly, giving the team more time to engage meaningfully."
"Ops folks are the linchpin connecting leadership and designers, orchestrating all the instruments."
Dig deeper—ask the Rosenbot:
More Videos
"Design research faces design complexity, which deals with the specific, intentional, and the non-existing."
Yoel SumitroActions and Reflections: Bridging the Skills Gap among Researchers
March 9, 2022
"Jobs are always asking me for three references; I might start asking for three happy employees."
Zariah CameronReDesigning Wellbeing for Equitable Care in the Workplace
September 23, 2024
"Forrester found that design thinking teams move twice as fast from idea to market because they’re closer to their users."
Doug PowellDesignOps and the Next Frontier: Leading Through Unpredictable Change
September 11, 2025
"Reviewing decisions out loud held everyone accountable and made it harder for Jeff to forget or change his mind."
Darian DavisLessons from a Toxic Work Relationship
January 8, 2024
"The essence of strategy isn’t painting a grand vision of the future, it's deciding what not to do."
Mike OrenWhy Pharmaceutical's Research Model Should Replace Design Thinking
March 28, 2023
"One operations person for every ten designers is when you start to feel the pain of coordination."
Jacqui FreyScale is Social Work
March 19, 2020
"If you find someone not following values, start with a one-on-one to understand their point of view and realign together."
Kim Holt Emma Wylds Pearl Koppenhaver Maisee XiongA Salesforce Panel Discussion on Values-Driven DesignOps
September 8, 2022
"Accessibility is innovation and the kinds of features people with disabilities need are incredible conveniences for the rest of us."
Samuel ProulxFrom Standards to Innovation: Why Inclusive Design Wins
September 10, 2025
"Adding inclusivity to the career ladder took three years and this is still a living document with room for change."
Laine Riley ProkayHow DesignOps can Drive Inclusive Career Ladders for All
September 30, 2021
