Why It Matters
At 8th Light, we help enterprise teams remove friction, foster alignment, and build tools that scale with confidence. This project exemplifies what happens when human-driven design meets technical rigor: major time and cost savings. By focusing on systems thinking, user needs, and resilient architecture, the organization created a path forward that supports both immediate impact and long-term innovation. This story is one of many showing how that approach delivers lasting results.
The Challenge: A Strong System Slowed by Scale
A Fortune 100 consumer technology company built a powerful experimentation pipeline — one that fueled product innovation across its digital ecosystem. As the platform grew, so did its complexity; manual approvals, fragmented workflows, and inconsistent tools created friction that slowed development cycles and added risk. Rather than patch over the pain points, the company sought a bold transformation to reduce this risk: to turn a solid foundation into a modern, scalable, and self-service experimentation platform.
The Goals
- Accelerate the end-to-end experimentation pipeline
- Reduce manual bottlenecks and operational risk
- Align cross-functional teams around shared metrics and ownership
- Unlock safe, scalable innovation at speed
Our Approach: Human-Centered Meets Technically Grounded
8th Light was brought in to lead a seven-week high-level assessment, blending human-centered design with technical architecture and organizational strategy. We followed the Double-Diamond Process to move from discovery to delivery:
- Problem Discovery
- Problem Synthesis
- Solution Discovery
- Solution Synthesis
The Timeline
Weeks 1-2: Solving the Friction
We kicked off with deep interviews across engineering and product leadership. These conversations uncovered systemic blockers — ranging from delays in approvals to lack of experiment ownership. Weekly playback sessions helped align stakeholders and refine the focus on the end-to-end experimentation lifecycle.
Week 3: Visualizing the Lifecycle
An onsite design-thinking workshop brought cross-functional stakeholders together to map the full experimentation journey — from idea to deployment, iteration, and promotion. This course of action revealed not just pain points, but opportunities to simplify and scale.
Weeks 4-6: Defining a Scalable Vision
With clear problem statements and user needs in hand, we developed a vision for a streamlined, automated experimentation platform. We established guiding principles and surfaced four high-impact recommendations, each supported by detailed, outcomes-driven roadmaps.
Week 7: Delivering Actionable Recommendations
We wrapped with an onsite final presentation to leadership, supported by:
- A prioritized roadmap for system and process improvements
- Four RFCs (Requests for Comments) for key technical changes
- A service blueprint of the experimentation lifecycle
- A visual synthesis connecting research insights, design principles, and recommended solutions
The Impact: From Bottlenecks to Breakthroughs
The initial 7-week assessment laid the foundation for a multi-phase transformation. By aligning cross-functional teams and delivering a clear vision, roadmap, and service blueprint, the organization was equipped with the tools and strategy needed to move forward.
In follow-on engagements, the organization began implementing the recommendations from our assessment—resulting in measurable improvements to experimentation velocity and developer experience:
- Update lead time reduced from 8 days to 2 hours ✅
- Manual steps in experiment deployment dropped from 9 to 1 ✅
- Onboarding time reduced from 15 weeks to 2 days ✅
- Increased team autonomy and alignment across engineering ✅
This progression exemplifies how strategic assessment—when paired with continued execution—can enable safe, scalable, and high-velocity experimentation.
Let’s build the next product innovation together. Learn how 8th Light can support your development goals. Get in touch.
