← Selected work · All case studies · How I work
Finding the delivery problem inside the experiment
A later overlay iteration exposed rendering problems, environment differences, and unclear component ownership. The retrospective gave us specific changes to make in the next brief.
My role: Led the Digital Optimization Team. This case describes a shared retrospective on delivery and handoffs.
The team: Product, design, development, and testing partners working across shared components and handoffs.
The full story
A test with more boundaries than expected
A later overlay iteration encountered rendering issues, differences between the test environment and the live site, and unclear ownership across shared components. This was a separate iteration from the published recommendation-overlay case.
Describe what failed precisely
The rendering approach opened multiple overlays and triggered errors. We worked with Sreekala on a workaround, but it was not scalable or performant enough for this test, so we abandoned that approach. Brannon helped keep the work moving by setting up the new content. The retrospective also made clear that production content needed an agreed development and deployment owner.
Another surprise was that “the overlay” was not one consistent experience. It behaved differently depending on whether a guest added to their bag from the homepage, a listing page, or a product page. We had begun with a site-wide test in mind, then found that we needed a much clearer map of who owned each version. The test environment and the live site behaved differently, too. These were separate problems, and each needed its own next step.
Make dependencies part of the next brief
The recommendations called for identifying component owners earlier, documenting platform limitations, clarifying content and deployment responsibilities, and making behavior more consistent between the test environment and the live site. Each recommendation put a previously uncertain boundary into the planning conversation.
More on the process behind the work →