I’m stepping aside as leader of the ResearchOps Community: thoughts, why and what next
In March 2018, I started the ResearchOps Community on Slack. At the time, I thought I was just one of a handful of people in the world who cared about helping user researchers focus on research, and organisations make the most of their specialist skills. The Slack community grew lightening fast and it quickly became clear that a lot of researchers cared about this stuff too; we fostered a movement. That ‘blitz vinnig’ growth seems obvious now— of course researchers want to solve their biggest logistical pain points (and ideally give them away). Enter Research Ops.
A number of not-easy logistical tasks bookend the doing of research, and they’re typically underestimated. The demands on researchers (and people who do research, like PMs and Designers) to play as a team, be impactful and compliant, procure, report and deliver in certain ways is overwhelming for many. And the bigger the organisation, the more the pressure.
In the end, researchers often feel they’re not delivering as they should be: they’re not able to be great researchers and sufficiently expert in legal/privacy, research participant recruitment, knowledge management, asset management, A/V technology, event organising, finances, filing, procurement, project management and more. And the conundrum is that they don’t have the time (the learning curve is often steep, too) to set up and maintain the systems, so the systems are never set up.
Hiring in a contractor to do set up is one solution, but this tends to fail because systems and services of any significance don’t look after themselves — and you don’t make the most of them when they’re set up in isolation. Using existing internal teams isn’t a silver bullet either, because they often don’t understand the needs of researchers and can’t take on the bigger services, like recruitment, that need full-time attention.
All this in the context of growing in-house research teams, a growing demand for research, and complex organisations that want to know more and more about their customers: Give me research. Lots of it. Make it quick and make it smart. Just speak to some people and send out a survey. It can’t be that hard…. Oh, but that’s not working.
It takes a 10-person Research Ops team to put all of the ‘bookending’ in place, and run and maintain it all for a team of 80 researchers and/or people who do research (PwDRs, as I abbreviate that respectable cohort). When you look at it that way, it’s easy to see how things stack up and, in the context of a large organisation, why Research Ops is more than just being an organised researcher.
I’ve digressed a bit from the point of this post, which is to say that I’m stepping away from leading the ResearchOps Community. As you likely can tell, this is not because I’ve lost passion for the topic. Quite the opposite, in fact. As Research Ops Manager at Atlassian, I’m nose deep in building out a team and services for researchers and PwDRs. I love my job.
I started the ResearchOps Community because I wanted to validate a little-known thing called Research Operations and help shape a conversation around it. I wanted to build a community of people interested in Research Operations so that we could feel less isolated in our work, so we could learn from and share with others, and so we could work together to figure it out. We did loads of that last year, and, in collaboration with researchers around the world, we produced the ResearchOps framework, which I regularly use at Atlassian to explain: this is what I do, this is where we’re going, this is what you need, and this is why my team is now 4 people strong and that’s just the start. This is why I need a multi-skilled, multi-person team. This is why centralising this work is good. This is why this work must have strong leadership, and why it is strategic and not just administrative. This is what to expect in the short, medium and long term.
Running a 1400+ strong community is very hard work, and very time consuming. My Research Operations interest lies primarily in large organisations and, in reality, there are very few people in the world who are doing that job — I’m fortunate to regularly catch up with most of them. The things that we think about, talk about and do in building out Research Ops in large organisations are very different to the conversations that researchers have about recruiting, and tools etc. as a necessary activity in delivering their research projects.
I’m not saying that you can’t be more organised (and even take loads from Research Ops, or do an element or two of it well) as a solo or small team of researchers — though it’s likely to be hard — I’m just saying that the conversations you’re going to have and things you’re going to do are wildly different from the conversations and things that a Research Ops Manager is having.
My work involves building out at least five staffed internal services that run like clockwork, and rely on strong collaborations with just about every part of the organisation including marketing, legal, technology, procurement, finances and more. The services need to be financially efficient and they need to deliver. My work includes managing Ops staff; designing and delivering the services; obtaining and managing budgets; managing partnerships with a large roster of vendors and with product leadership across the organisation; and making sure we’re offering a good experience to people who take part in research. I’m an internal entrepreneur of multiple mini-enterprises. It’s a job that cannot be done as an adjunct to doing research, you will never have the time. If you did, you’d have done it already.
Putting passion into that work, running a big community, and enjoying the incredible city that I now call home, left me with little time to relax, and no time to write or talk about what I’m doing and learning, or spend time hearing what others are doing in this intriguing space.
I’m stepping aside from the ResearchOps Community with an immense amount of gratitude. It’s been an incredible privilege and pleasure to get to know so many amazing people around the world. I’ve made friends for life ♥, and I’ll be ever grateful for the time and experience that you’ve all shared — especially the ‘Cheese Board’ and the #WhatisResearchOps organisers. I’m leaving the Community in the good hands of the people who helped make it what it is right from the start, the Cheese Board: Brigette Metzler, Emma Boulton, Nishita Gill, Chris Adams, Zack Naylor and Andrew Maier.
I’ll be using the time I get back to curate content for another organisation (to be announced), and doing more talks, workshops and podcasts. I’ll also keep up my Monday evening office hours (AEDT) so that I can learn from you and share more directly, too. As ever, I’ll be sharing and occasionally ranting on Twitter.
I can’t wait to see how the Research Ops conversation grows this year, particularly around scale, when Ops is Ops, and when it’s not — I’ve been exploring that conversation this week — and when you really-really need Ops.
Go team! Onwards!
