01 – Featured · Cisco
From Siloed to Connected
Optimizing how a 40-person Cisco Security product design team plans, communicates, and operates together. As Lead DPM, I diagnosed what was missing across siloed pods and built the operational and cultural connective tissue — quarterly capacity planning, portfolio-wide work tracking, and a team-wide ritual — to bring them together.
Role
Lead Design Program Manager, Cisco Security DesignOps
Scope
40-person product design org spanning multiple workstreams
Tools
Airtable, Jira, Miro, Webex
01 — The Challenge
Individually capable, collectively fragmented.
- Teams had rituals and some process in place — but were largely operating in silos. Designers and managers lacked visibility into what other teams were working on.
- Planning felt ad hoc. There was no shared framework to surface workload, priorities, and constraints across the portfolio ahead of leadership reviews.
- There was no shared space for connection, craft, or clarity across teams — the org was individually capable but collectively fragmented.
02 — Approach
Three initiatives: planning, visibility, and community.
01
Quarterly Capacity Planning
Introduced and led a structured quarterly capacity planning ritual with design managers — and built the supporting framework in Airtable to make workload, priorities, and constraints visible across the portfolio. I worked closely with managers to ensure they were prepared and aligned ahead of executive leadership reviews, and facilitated those sessions to keep conversations focused and productive.
02
Work Tracking & Visibility
As part of a broader org-wide initiative, I owned the rollout and adoption of a new work tracking system within the portfolio team — standardizing how work was logged, tracked, and reported across teams so leadership and ICs had a consistent view of what was in flight at any given time.
03
Team-Wide Ritual
Developed and launched a bi-weekly team ritual that brought the full 40-person team together — creating a dedicated space for designers to share work, ideas, craft, and process alongside leadership updates. The goal was simple: build the shared clarity and sense of community that siloed team structures naturally erode over time.
03 — Outcomes
A design team that went from siloed to connected.
- Positive response from both leadership and ICs — teams felt more connected, more informed, and more aligned.
- Capacity planning gave managers a clearer operational picture going into each quarter, and a smoother handoff into exec reviews.
- The new work tracking system brought consistency and visibility to a portfolio that previously relied on informal updates.
- The bi-weekly ritual became a consistent anchor for the team — a moment of connection and shared purpose that didn't exist before.
What Stakeholders Say
Darin played a key role in improving cross-functional collaboration by establishing clearer partnership models, streamlining commitment processes, and bringing greater predictability to complex initiatives.
04 — What I Learned
"Teams will adopt new rituals more readily than you'd expect — as long as the work genuinely benefits them. When people feel the value, they lean in."
"Scale is the hardest part. Large teams don't operate as a monolith; creating something that works across pods means knowing when to flex and when to hold the line."
"Nothing is ever truly done. The best DesignOps programs aren't built to be finished — they're built to adapt as priorities, teams, and rituals evolve."
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