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
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The ambiguity of the word 'We' at WeWork necessitated developing a unique internal syntax for clarity.
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WeWork operates at an exceptionally rapid pace, experiencing a week’s worth of challenges daily.
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Program managers were initially misunderstood as 'expense of routers,' highlighting a gap in understanding their unique skills.
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Learning people’s origin stories reveals their motivations and helps build deeper connections beyond just knowing roles.
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The Red Tech mission was formed from three distinct waves of teams with very different cultures and histories.
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Introducing simple, fundamental agile scrum training helped unify teams with varying levels of scrum knowledge.
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Quarterly retrospectives with strict ground rules and three focused questions unlocked honest dialogue and revealed emotional undercurrents.
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Mapping agile stories directly to OKRs connected team efforts to company goals and surfaced cross-team collaborations.
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Implementing peer recognition through the Silver Heart Hat Awards boosted morale and peer appreciation visibly and inclusively.
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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."
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