The Challenge: A Tightrope Walk Between Speed and Insight
In 2019, Vodafone Spain was in the thick of its Agile transformation. Teams were racing to push products to market faster than ever, but a significant gap remained: user research was often sidelined in the sprint to launch. Without a structured research approach, our teams were making decisions with fragmented insights, and usability issues often surfaced too late, resulting in costly reworks. As a company, we were facing an uphill battle: How could we integrate meaningful, actionable user research into an already fast-paced development cycle—without slowing it down? And, more importantly, how could we do it on a limited budget?
Key Achievements:
Research became an integral part of the Agile workflows
Better Decision-Making
Increased Efficiency
Improved Collaboration
The Challenge: A Tightrope Walk Between Speed and Insight
In 2019, Vodafone Spain was in the thick of its Agile transformation. Teams were racing to push products to market faster than ever, but a significant gap remained: user research was often sidelined in the sprint to launch. Without a structured research approach, our teams were making decisions with fragmented insights, and usability issues often surfaced too late, resulting in costly reworks.
As a company, we were facing an uphill battle: How could we integrate meaningful, actionable user research into an already fast-paced development cycle—without slowing it down? And, more importantly, how could we do it on a limited budget?
The Solution: Building a Lean, Scalable Research Ops Framework
In response to these challenges, we embarked on a journey to build a lean, flexible, and scalable Research Ops model that could deliver actionable insights without draining resources. We knew we needed to standardize processes, foster cross-functional collaboration, and make research insights accessible to everyone. But we also had to do all of this on a shoestring budget.
Our solution was built on three key pillars: Standardization, Collaboration, and Accessibility.
1. Standardization: Laying the Foundation for Efficient Research
Our first challenge was to ensure that research could be done consistently and effectively across all squads, even with limited resources. We created frameworks that allowed teams to hit the ground running, ensuring that research would be efficient and scalable.
Key Actions:
Research Templates & Methodologies: We created clear, ready-to-use research templates that included the best methodologies, key performance indicators (KPIs), and goals, ensuring uniformity across teams.
Centralized Research Repository: A shared repository made insights easily accessible, reducing the need for teams to reinvent the wheel with each study.
Aligned Timelines: We synchronized research with Agile workflows, ensuring that research cycles were fast enough to keep pace with development sprints.
2. Cross-Functional Collaboration: Bridging the Gap Between Teams
Design, product management, and engineering needed to work together more closely. We realized that the only way to make research impactful was to ensure that it wasn’t just a siloed function, but an integral part of every team’s decision-making process.
Key Actions:
Inclusive Research Sessions: We began involving product managers, engineers, and designers in research activities, so they could directly engage with insights.
Research Backlog Kanban: We introduced a Kanban Board to prioritize research activities, providing visibility to stakeholders and ensuring that research was aligned with the most pressing business needs.
Training Programs: We upskilled designers and product managers in basic research methodologies, reducing our reliance on external researchers and empowering internal teams to conduct their own lightweight studies.
3. Accessibility: Making Research Accessible for Everyone
One of the biggest barriers to effective research was accessibility. Research insights were often locked away in documents that were difficult to access or understand. Our goal was to democratize research and make it available to all teams, no matter their role or technical expertise.
Key Actions:
Self-Serve Research Hub: We created an easy-to-use research hub in Confluence, where teams could quickly access findings and insights. This allowed designers and product managers to independently retrieve relevant data without waiting for formal reports.
Empowering Designers: We encouraged product designers to conduct small, focused research projects independently, allowing them to quickly test assumptions and inform design decisions.
Test Utilization Rate: We tracked how often insights from research influenced development decisions, ensuring that our research had real impact and was not just an academic exercise.
Implementation & Execution: A Cohesive, Cross-Functional Approach
As we put our Research Ops model into practice, we structured roles to ensure clarity and accountability. We also tailored research methods to different phases of the product lifecycle, ensuring the right kind of insights were gathered at the right time.
Roles & Responsibilities:
Research Strategist: Responsible for defining research priorities and aligning them with business goals.
User Researcher: Conducted user studies, synthesized insights, and provided actionable recommendations.
Product Designer: Applied research findings within their teams to guide design decisions.
Research Techniques by Product Phase:
Discovery Phase: We used heuristic evaluations, benchmarking, user diaries, and interviews to uncover initial pain points and opportunities.
Concept Phase: In this phase, co-creation workshops, RITE testing, and card sorting helped refine product concepts.
Evaluation Phase: Usability testing, focus groups, and A/B testing were used to validate prototypes and ensure that the product would meet user needs.
Measuring Success: Ensuring Research Drives Real Impact
To assess the effectiveness of our Research Ops framework, we defined several key metrics that would show us how research was influencing product development.
Key Metrics:
Customer Effort Score (CES): We aimed for a CES above 5 (on a 1-7 scale), ensuring that our products made life easier for users.
System Usability Score (SUS): Our goal was to achieve a SUS of 80+, indicating that the products we developed were both intuitive and user-friendly.
Active Insights: We tracked the percentage of research insights that were actually implemented within two sprints, making sure that our work directly influenced product outcomes.
Test Utilization Rate: This metric helped us gauge how often research insights were used to make real-time product improvements, driving both design and business outcomes.
Results & Business Impact: Research as a Key Driver of Product Excellence
Despite the constraints, we achieved significant results that had a lasting impact on Vodafone’s product development process.
Key Achievements:
User-Centric Product Development: Research became an integral part of the Agile workflows, ensuring that every product decision was informed by user insights.
Better Decision-Making: Research data directly impacted product roadmaps and design iterations, leading to more user-centered decisions.
Increased Efficiency: Early detection of usability issues led to a reduction in costly rework, accelerating time-to-market.
Improved Collaboration: Cross-functional teams became more engaged with research findings, resulting in deeper collaboration and alignment.
Key Learnings & Next Steps: The Path Forward
The journey of building Research Ops on a limited budget was filled with valuable lessons and insights.
Lessons Learned:
Upskilling Teams: Training product designers and PMs in basic research techniques ensured that research was no longer a bottleneck and that teams could work more autonomously.
Clear Communication: Transparent and accessible reporting of research insights helped foster trust and collaboration, speeding up decision-making.
Cultural Shift: Embedding research into Agile was a challenge, but it ultimately led to more user-focused products and a shift towards more data-driven decision-making.
Next Steps:
Expansion: We plan to extend the Research Ops framework to other markets within Vodafone, creating a global standard.
Automation: We are working on automating insights tracking to measure the long-term impact of research on business outcomes.
Stronger Collaboration: We aim to strengthen partnerships with Data Science teams, combining quantitative and qualitative insights for even richer understanding.
Conclusion: Research Ops as a Business Driver
Building Research Ops at Vodafone Spain on a shoestring budget proved that you don’t need unlimited resources to make user research a core business driver. By standardizing processes, fostering collaboration, and making insights accessible to all teams, we successfully integrated research into our Agile workflows—improving both user experience and business outcomes.
This lean, scalable model is now a global blueprint for Vodafone teams, showing that impactful research doesn’t require a big budget—it just requires creativity, collaboration, and a commitment to putting users at the heart of the product development process.
Final Takeaway:
When research becomes ingrained in your development process, it doesn’t just improve products—it transforms the way teams think, collaborate, and drive business success.
