https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:US:86fe1365-936b-45cf-987c-326e8d92d623
As Rocket scaled its product organization and adopted SAFe, delivery became more structured—but UX grew increasingly fragmented, reactive, and disconnected from product strategy. Teams were shipping efficiently but lacked consistent alignment with user needs and a clear view of the impact on the experience. The result was growing friction throughout the product lifecycle, with design brought in too late to meaningfully influence decisions.
As Rocket scaled its product organization and adopted SAFe, delivery became more structured—but UX grew increasingly fragmented, reactive, and disconnected from product strategy. Teams were shipping efficiently but lacked consistent alignment with user needs and a clear view of the impact on the experience. The result was growing friction throughout the product lifecycle, with design brought in too late to meaningfully influence decisions.
I worked with leadership to develop a portfolio operating model anchored in a unified roadmap frame, a KPI tree, and a clear decision cadence. We upgraded tools to better map to the new frameworks.
The roadmap frame connected work from strategy themes down to releases, making scope and sequencing visible. The KPI tree forced agreement on how success would be measured. The tradeoff cadence created standard rituals for reallocating capacity, stopping work, or doubling down without escalation and confusion.
The roadmap frame connected work from strategy themes down to releases, making scope and sequencing visible. The KPI tree forced agreement on how success would be measured. The tradeoff cadence created standard rituals for reallocating capacity, stopping work, or doubling down without escalation and confusion.
This drove a measurable reallocation of effort toward higher-value bets, reduced fragmentation, and lifted portfolio KPIs. It also improved stakeholder trust because the portfolio became a shared, transparent system rather than a negotiation.
The result was stronger alignment across product, UX, and engineering, reduced delivery friction, and measurable improvements in both experience quality and operating efficiency. Teams moved faster with greater confidence, reducing task friction by 22%, increasing engagement by 17%, and accelerating release cycles from six weeks to two—demonstrating the impact of embedding UX as a core component of product strategy and delivery.