Why business units are combining with Ops...DesignOps, ResearchOps, DevOps

Have you wondered what the heck is going on with adding "Ops" to the end of traditional business units?

I’m sure you’ve heard of bizops, dataops, designops...the list goes on, but exactly why ops is being added to so many different types of teams was a question that suddenly piqued my attention.

I was mulling this over with a CTO friend because I'm a keynote speaker at the DesignOps Global Conference.

Various combinations of hybrid business units that are showing up across companies.

While crafting my speech, I realized, "Heck, this conference has a hybrid name! What does it mean to be the Head of DesignOps? Isn't that a sign of hybridity??!"

So, of course I wove that idea into my slides.

I googled "What's with all the 'ops' terms" and found this article which described an eye popping 😳 amount of terms I've never heard of, all connecting "ops" with different business functions. I put some of these terms in the image in this post.

What stands out to you in this image of Ops terms?

You can quickly see the array of funny sounding, yet completely real, terms that are used in offices and tech companies.

The best quote I found to describe the reason for this phenomenon is this:

"In the past couple of years, there has been a tremendous proliferation of acronyms with the “Ops” suffix. This was started in the software space by the merger of development (dev) and IT operations (Ops). Since then people have been creating new Ops terms at a pretty rapid pace."

Why do you companies find it important to merge operations with various departments?

Simple.

The power of hybrid vigor! (See my other blog post to get the scoop on that awesome—and totally true—term).

Hybridization causes hybrid vigor, which means things are more powerful together than the parent parts. In the case of all these "ops" terms, the problems companies are solving for include:

1. Separate functions inside a company are siloed

2. Teams are too far removed from the customer experience

3. Technological processes are complex, and with large teams, projects quickly get complicated

To eliminate and reduce these barriers, the practical solution is to enmesh (or as I often say hybridize) the situation.

Why not blend the operations side with other domains to make things:

1. more unified

2. more seamless with better feedback loops

3. more interaction between workflows

Voilà!!!

Hybridization wins again. 

Here's an image I found online that shows the difference between the traditional way versus the (ahem) hybrid way.

Now is the business case for hybridity starting to sink in?