I remember it like it was yesterday (Although it was around March). I saw a post on Linkedin shared by Dave Malouf about an initiative started by Kate Towsey around ResearchOps.

There had been a growing attention around DesignOps and then suddenly there was a new buzz word? My initial thoughts were that it was just another fad that was just adding to the already complex ecosystem we already find ourselves in.

Despite that, I decided to click on the link. Reading Kate’s post, I identified with many of the issues that she pointed out. Upon further consideration, my interest was peaked and I decided to explore where this was going, asking to be invited to the Slack community.

My reasons for joining

My specific reasons for joining were the following, and maybe some people curious about the community might identify with my motivations:

Research is broken

I know that’s a bold statement, but when we look at research in the professional world, I can say with some confidence, that it is somewhat broken.

I’ve worked with various customers and teams. Everytime I join a new project, I have to go through an arduous process of convincing everyone about the importance and impact of Research.

Even when we convince the teams that they should do research, I’ve gotten feedback like “Of course, of course, we’ll do that right after this next sprint, we just have to get these few things out of the way…”

This usually means that research keeps getting pushed to the back. In sprint cycles, I’ve only worked with 1 team willing to include research, as in most cases they want everything to be quick. (My experience only, there are probably other teams working in sprint cycles that do this better)

In truth, most of the times, I often have these teams admitting later on that we should have done the research once the product goes live and we spend a lot of time with the fixes.

What’s a research library/archive?

Even in the most organised projects I’ve worked on, the actual archiving and organisation of research, data and insights has been somewhat lacking. It’s even more confusing if you weren’t on the project from the initial stages.

In the beginning, many of the teams I worked with had been in a rush to get their MVP up and running, so they’ve done some research, but making sense of it is a chore. Unless you were there, you have difficulty understanding the real meaning of what was concluded.

Even with those teams that have a semblance of a research library, actually searching and discovering what you need is often very inefficient.

What tool(s) do you want to use?

This is probably the hardest question to answer and I know there are a lot of great tools out there, but seriously, how can we possibly test out all of them to understand which is best?

Even if we do manage to test them out, I’ve found that they all have something that they’re really good at, but I still haven’t seen one that ticks off every question I’m looking to answer. I’ve even noticed that seasoned researchers don’t have a clear black and white answer for this question, so how could I hope too?

I guess it would be easier if someone just made the decision for us so we could just start using one and live with it…

Make sure Portugal has a voice

It’s true. I joined because I wanted Portugal to participate in the discussion. We’re a small country, but there are a great group of people rallying around research.

Although I’m originally from South Africa, this is where I live and work and I want to be sure we have all the tools and resources to get the job done well. I also know that Kate wouldn’t let South Africa miss out ;)

A real community

Upon being accepted into the community, I started seeing many people with the same ideals as me. They also faced many of the same obstacles with research.

Many incredible discussions ensued, and a lot of the doubt was around how ResearchOps should be defined. I believe many of us working in fields that include research, design and ideation have suffered a bit because of lack of definition.

Conversation started evolving around organising a couple of workshops in-person to get to the heart of the problem. The community leaders quickly understood the colossal challenge it would be, especially considering that the community was quickly growing all over the world.

Under the guidance of Kate’s constant drive to make the community valuable for all, most of us rallied around the idea of facilitating workshops in key cities around the globe. I don’t believe Kate was expecting such a great response. Volunteers from cities around the world started signing up and showing their enthusiasm and availability(myself included).

The beginning of the #WhatIsResearchOps workshops

I still remember that first call. We were still a small group, but you could feel the enthusiasm in the participants. The opportunity to be part of something that could potentially impact all our lives.

We hashed out all the details of how things would work and what were the next steps. The community leaders had already stepped up with guidelines that they would put together to help workshop facilitators. We felt at all times that we had support of some great minds.

On my end, despite having limited time, the workshop started coming together reasonably easy. I put the word out to find people who might be interested in participating and was contacted by Gonçalo Veiga about how him and the OutSystems team would be more than happy to provide a space and all the logistics.

The response for participation was also much higher than I was expecting. We had participants from various backgrounds and not just researchers. But everyone who participated had an interest in research and how to implement it in their organisation.

Takeaways from the workshop

I can’t speak for the global community yet (the data is being processed) but the Lisbon workshop went really well and participants were very active. The workshop lasted for 4 hours with a great dinner in the middle. The conversations kept flowing throughout.

The main issues identified were:

Buy-in from stakeholders Research logistics Education of research methodologies/process Research Archive/Library

The participants also showed a strong interest in taking the conversation forward and had some great ideas about the community and the initiative as a whole.

Now the community is bringing together the data from all the workshops held around the world. It’s been a daunting task especially considering it’s qualitative data. The community has been helping out whenever they have free time and always pushing to help keep each other motivated.

What has it meant for me?

Even though the data isn’t all in I’ve already taken so much from the community of people interested in research.

I’ve gotten to meet some like-minded people in Portugal, even though I thought I already knew most of them… seems I didn’t.

I’ve started approaching research in a new way and take more into consideration all the mechanics around research and how they impact other teams and the organisation as a whole.

I’ve begun arguing the importance of research with more fervor and new resources that I didn’t have before.

Last but not least, I’ve been introduced to a great community of people who believe in research as strongly as I do.

Thanks

Special thanks to Dave Malouf for introducing me to the group and being such an active participance in the discussions.

Thanks to Kate Towsey for creating the community and bringing us all together.

Thanks to those that work to constantly keep the community going and help us with guidance:

Kate Towsey, Andrew Maier, Emma Boulton, Ben Cubbon, Nishita Gill, Shreya Toshniwal, Chris Adams, Kathryn Hing, Steph Troeth, Brigette Metzler and Ruth Ellison (Hope I tagged the right people)

Thanks Tomomi Sasaki for great discussions and the slidedeck from the Tokyo workshop to help with mine for Lisbon.

Isabel Novais Machado for helping out with the workshop and ideas.

Thanks to Gonçalo Veiga and OutSystems for providing us with a way to hold the workshop.