IBM Operations Analytics

Identifying issues before they become catastrophes.

Operations Analytics was a powerful tool designed for IT administrators to detect anomalous behavior in data centers. By identifying potential issues early, the tool enabled administrators to prevent minor problems from escalating into major disruptions.

The process began with the administrator uploading a machine log file that hinted at a potential issue, such as a slow response time. This simple indicator could point to a failing network card or other critical hardware issues, allowing proactive maintenance.

Our primary user was Jim, a system administrator tasked with maintaining seamless operations across the infrastructure.

As the Design Lead on this project, my role centered on collaboration and oversight. While I don’t have a wealth of design artifacts to showcase, I contributed to the project in significant ways, including:

• Backlog Management: Partnering with the Offering Manager and Development team to refine and prioritize user stories.
• Sprint Planning and Delivery: Ensuring designs were assigned to the team, completed within the two-week sprint cycle, and delivered on schedule.
• User Validation: Working closely with our user researcher to validate designs with real users and incorporating their feedback into iterative improvements.

An MVP of the product was successfully launched on the IBM Bluemix cloud catalog, providing IT professionals like Jim the tools to safeguard their systems and prevent potential failures

We followed the IBM Design Thinking playbook as we sought to understand user needs. After conducting user interviews, we built empathy maps from which we extracted user insights.

Once we had clear insights and a good understanding of our target user, we created a simple proto-persona.