It\u2019s impossible to deny the impact that technology has had on the world when there are new methodologies, new roles and new disciplines emerging every year - ones that would make no sense to us pre-web era. One of the most recent we\u2019ve seen arrive in the product sphere is ResearchOps, following closely behind DevOps and DesignOps.<\/p>\n
The field is so new, that there is barely anything written on this topic which does not reflect the growing need for this function in business. In this article, we\u2019ll debunk ResearchOps - what it is, where it came from and why it is essential for research teams and beyond.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving the unique and powerful position of being one of the few people in the organisation who know what the research team is doing and learning from their research \u2013 is a superpower.\u201d - Kate Towsey, ResearcOPs Lead at Atlassian <\/span><\/p>\n If you\u2019ve heard of ResearchOps, you\u2019ve probably heard of Kate Towsey. A legend within the field for building a strong and supportive community<\/a> and legitimising the need for this business function.<\/p>\n Well, the truth is, ResearchOps, or Research Operations, is many things - with a number of goals including:<\/p>\n So as you can see, ResearchOps is not only set out to benefit researchers, but the wider company as well. In our interview with Kate Towsey<\/a>, she explains that \u201cResearchOps is about offering support and infrastructure to people who do research. This is because in a lot of bigger organisations, it\u2019s not just researchers doing research, there\u2019s also PMs and designers doing research\u201d.<\/p>\n Practicality wise, ResearchOps looks at things like participant recruitment<\/a>, tooling, procurement, vendor relationship management and more. You can explore just how much, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n To create meaningful products and businesses, you need to connect with and understand your customers. User research<\/a>, through process of user testing<\/a>, drives this connection and enables you to apply invaluable insights to your day to day work.<\/p>\n Insights like these can:<\/p>\n Before a ResearchOps team comes in, the operational side of things can be decentralised. Whilst this might not stop a business doing research, they\u2019ll still be spending money on it but might not be getting the most accurate data in the most efficient way.<\/p>\n Introducing a ResearchOps team centralises these costs and changes the conversation from, \u2018How much is research costing us?\u2019 to \u2018Let\u2019s get closer to our customers\u2019.<\/p>\n ResearchOps enables businesses to be close to their customers skilfully, providing a trackable means for return on investment.<\/p>\n At Atlassian<\/strong>, Kate Towsey tells us the team has grown to 5 people in 7 months, a few focused on participant recruitment and a couple on engagement where they\u2019ll be making sure research is accessible to the rest of the business. Next, they\u2019ll be looking at getting someone focused on QuantOps and then a Digital Librarian, who\u2019ll act as more of the storytellers of the research.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve procured a variety of vendors or pathways for recruiting various kinds of people \u2013 and worked hard on tooling around our Atlassian research group and on our community of participants.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n One of their biggest challenges so far has been scale. Whilst they\u2019re getting the word our about the multiple services they\u2019re offering and the response has been super positive - then comes the problem of balancing growing demand without the scale to deliver. Although, it\u2019s a catch 22, because you need demand to bid for more headcount.<\/p>\n At Deliveroo<\/strong>, they\u2019re just embarking on their ResearchOps journey. UX Researcher, Sophie Woods, tells us that the aim of this new function is to provide internal researchers with the support and infrastructure they need to scale their impact effectively.<\/p>\n Currently, the ResearchOps team\u2019s support helps them with handling participant recruitment, research planning and logistics, finding analytics and organisation tools and also set up training sessions to upskill the team.<\/p>\nResearchOps is...<\/h2>\n
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User research helps create better products, ResearchOps facilitates that<\/h2>\n
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How are other companies tackling ResearchOps?<\/h2>\n