Building the Foundation: UX Operations at Scale
Walmart aimed to reduce costs through operational efficiency, which meant eliminating manual processes, streamlining critical workflows, and investing in technology. The digital transformation drove UX demand and team expansion into new areas of the business.
As the UX organization grew, teams got assigned to specific areas and developed their own ways of planning, prioritizing, and delivering work, hiring talent, and managing teams. Processes varied across teams, leading to inconsistent expectations, outcomes, and benchmarks for quality.
COMPANY
INDUSTRY
Enterprise Software
BUSINESS OBJECTIVE
Operational Efficiency
MY ROLE
While leading my team as a Senior Manager, I contributed to the UX Operations team by repurposing documentation and workflows from my area into scalable templates. I created tools for recurring trackers and management tasks—starting as a proof of concept within my team and expanding them across peer UX teams in collaboration with Ops.
REACH
UX Operations team
6 Managers
100+ UX Researchers & Designers
THE PROBLEM
The lack of shared operational standards made it difficult to manage projects, align on expectations, and support hiring with consistency. Without unified systems, we struggled to maintain visibility, accountability, and a baseline for operational excellence.
THE SOLUTION
Design and implement a scalable set of templates and ways of working—spanning project management, team coordination, and workflows—to enable operational efficiency across UX teams.
Key Issues
Several operational gaps emerged as the UX teams and organization scaled, resulting in different levels of speed and efficiency. These issues spanned multiple facets of day-to-day work and strategic planning.
Process and Approach
I standardized documentation and automated workflows to preserve cognitive load for the efforts that mattered most. Creating clarity around processes would save time, eliminate redundancy, and elevate the quality of both our output and our culture.
After gaining a deeper understanding of Walmart’s unique internal workflows, I determined which processes needed structure and which data points were critical to track for both project and team management.
The templates and guides grouped into three (3) key areas—project management, team management, and ways of working—providing structure that supported both designers in their day-to-day work and managers in driving clarity, accountability, and performance.
UX Project Management Template
1:1 Meeting Notes Template
Guide to UX/UI Deliverables
Strategic Training and Enablement
The effort to standardize ways of working involved training a select group of UX leads—equipping them to use the templates, provide feedback, and model best practices within their teams. These early champions helped set the standard for what “good” looked like.
The Statement of Work (SOW) became the most widely adopted and impactful template. It addressed a core issue—unclear project goals and expectations—by aligning stakeholders around knowns, unknowns, and success criteria from the start, resulting in stronger planning, communication, and delivery.
Once refined, the templates were shared with the UX Operations team and distributed org-wide, including to the Director of Design and Research, who focused on leveling job expectations.
To support hiring parity—ensuring candidates were evaluated consistently against the expectations of each role—I presented candidate screening techniques to UX leadership, Talent Partner, and UX Operations. This helped bridge the gap between job descriptions and how we assessed qualifications in practice.
The Statement of Work (SOW) became the most widely adopted and impactful template.
Impact and Reach
The templates were shared across the organization and integrated into broader UX operational efforts, extending their reach beyond my immediate team.
Teams that adopted the full toolkit reported:
More stable stakeholder relationships, with clearer expectations from project start
Improved file structures and better documentation hygiene
Greater project predictability, supporting better time and capacity planning
More time and focus for UX metrics, strategy, and design quality
Reach
Voluntary Adoption
Company Recognition
Kristine was recognized at the end of the year for her contributions as a "Strong Collaborator" within the Associate Digital Experience organization.
Her ability to standardize processes and adapt to shifting priorities was instrumental in the success of her team and the technology products she supported.
Laura B., VP of Associate Digital Experience
Reflections and Lessons Learned
The rollout offered valuable insights into what it takes to operationalize change across a large design organization. Key takeaways included:
Start Small to Build Momentum: Piloting templates within my own team allowed for quick iteration, visible results, and early advocates—laying a foundation for broader adoption without overwhelming the org.
Champions Drive Cultural Change: Training a few key UX leads helped demonstrate the templates’ value through peer influence, not just process. This peer-led approach proved more effective than centralized directives alone.
Adoption Requires Reinforcement: While voluntary uptake surfaced what worked, sustained usage required more effort. Without reinforcement from managers or Ops, even well-designed tools risked being underused or inconsistently applied.
Documentation Enables Strategic Focus: When used consistently, the templates freed up cognitive space for teams to focus on UX metrics, quality, and stakeholder relationships—proving that operational clarity is a strategic asset, not just an admin task.
The experience reinforced that change doesn't happen through tools alone—it requires alignment, trust, and a shared vision for how we work better together.
