A Design Ops Girl in a Dev Ops World
Summary
DevOps has spent a decade focused on tooling that allows developers to code, deploy, monitor, and optimize quickly and efficiently. Along the way, many within that community forget that the people within that community and the developers that they serve are, first and foremost, people. Hear what happens when a Design Ops professional finds herself embedded in a DevOps team, helps them see each other as people, and applies a bit of design thinking, tools and techniques to help them learn the skills necessary as the people they serve move from the information age to the conceptual age.
Key Insights
-
•
The ambiguity of the word 'We' at WeWork necessitated developing a unique internal syntax for clarity.
-
•
WeWork operates at an exceptionally rapid pace, experiencing a week’s worth of challenges daily.
-
•
Program managers were initially misunderstood as 'expense of routers,' highlighting a gap in understanding their unique skills.
-
•
Learning people’s origin stories reveals their motivations and helps build deeper connections beyond just knowing roles.
-
•
The Red Tech mission was formed from three distinct waves of teams with very different cultures and histories.
-
•
Introducing simple, fundamental agile scrum training helped unify teams with varying levels of scrum knowledge.
-
•
Quarterly retrospectives with strict ground rules and three focused questions unlocked honest dialogue and revealed emotional undercurrents.
-
•
Mapping agile stories directly to OKRs connected team efforts to company goals and surfaced cross-team collaborations.
-
•
Implementing peer recognition through the Silver Heart Hat Awards boosted morale and peer appreciation visibly and inclusively.
-
•
Building or finding a 'tribe' of trusted collaborators is essential for emotional support and navigating rapid organizational change.
Notable Quotes
"When I talk about We, am I talking about You and Me, or the company itself? The word We can get really confusing."
"The volume coming at me every day was like a week’s worth of work compressed into one day."
"Program managers are just expense of routers—what they missed was the how, that secret sauce of EQ."
"Asking someone’s origin story gets you their why, not just the what."
"There are at least six definitions for desks at WeWork—context matters."
"Many team members were faking scrum until they made it; they used the words but didn’t know the practice."
"What started off poorly but improved during the quarter is where all of the magic happened in retrospectives."
"Quarterly retros are sacred; what happens in retro stays in retro to create trust and honest conversations."
"Multiple teams were supporting the same goals in different ways, and that led to meaningful cross-team conversations."
"Find the people with whom you can lock eyes—those are your tribe, your support system."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Everyone is circling around similar topics but in very different ways—there’s a battle of models but more similarities than differences."
John CutlerOxbows, Rivers, and Estuaries: How to navigate the currents of change (without burning out)
December 3, 2024
"I felt on edge and physically depleted after our interactions."
Darian DavisLessons from a Toxic Work Relationship
January 8, 2024
"If you’re having more conversation about what the actual question means than answering it, that’s a problem with the canvas we need to fix."
Dave GrayGroup Activity: Making Sense of DesignOps
November 7, 2017
"A story lets people assign the meaning that's powerful to them and then think about the decisions they need to make and align."
John CutlerThe Alignment Trap
November 29, 2023
"Just because you can color code something doesn’t mean you should."
Abby CovertStuck? Diagrams Help
October 27, 2022
"You can see our organization through the homepage of our site — we each owned a rectangle."
Mark InterranteCollaboration Flows in Product Development
June 9, 2017
"Trend forecasting is a culture industry—it produces culture as much as it predicts it."
Devon PowersImagining Better Futures
March 9, 2022
"Good designers understand you can’t design what you don’t understand."
Prayag NarulaHow to Empower Your Designers to Do Good Research – And Why You Want To
June 10, 2022
"Your short term memory is the context window; too big, and the model has trouble accessing everything."
Peter Van DijckHands on AI #3: Claude Code for UX people
October 22, 2025
