What is research ops and how do you actually build it?

Building research operations at any size company, from seed stage startup to enterprise, creates a foundation to efficiently, ethically, and effectivelyscale processes and practices to drive impact for the business, users, and the team. Some key focus areas for research operations include defining and implementing data retention policies, facilitating training, setting up a repository, crafting templates for plans and interview guides, and creating processes for how research is done and how to do it well.

There might already be a specialist on your team, or you might be a research team of one — whatever your situation, research operations can be built and scaled anytime. My experience building and scaling research operations has taken place at startups from Seed stage to Series B, and I’ve seen its impact across the team and the business: from supporting research sprints to product-market fit research and helping the team navigate the pivots that many startups face. Your future self and team will thank you for setting up research ops early and refreshing it often.

There are quite a few existing frameworks that you can leverage depending on your needs and approach, like Nielsen Norman Group’s (NN/g) six pillars or ReOps’ eight pillars. Remember that frameworks are just tools to help you make decisions and create processes — you’ll need to map out where you are now and where you want to grow, and right-size a recommendation and approach for your organization, team, research maturity, and resources.

Let’s take a look at how I actually did it at a startup.

Phase 1

Discover & evaluate

01 Conduct research with stakeholders
02 Assess research maturity using NN/g framework
03 Map out tools and identify gaps

Phase 2

Get buy in

01 Get buy in from stakeholders
02 Align on the work ahead
03 Present findings & recommendations for tools, approach, and why now

Phase 3

Build the foundation

01 Create processes, templates (interview guides, research plans, report etc.)
02 Start a resource hub (choosing a method, what is research, research ethics, research vs interview questions, etc.)
03 Launch a Slack channel to share resources, socialize key findings or insights
04 Set up new research tools (Dovetail) and socialize with team

Phase 4

Scale & refine

01 Set up a research repository to house findings, insights, and templates
02 Create tutorials on how to use the repo and hold office hours for questions
03 Keep socializing and sharing out the work being done

Phase 5

Educate & empower

01 Deploy a survey to explore workshop topics and open research questions
02 Design and facilitate research workshops to align team and scale research
03 Continue to refresh and iterate on the foundations

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