Revitalized a Marketing Operating System

Built and scaled a marketing operating system that connected planning, alignment, execution, and delivery across a global team. Grounded in single sources of truth, this work introduced standard ways of working that brought visibility to priorities, strengthened upfront alignment, and reduced friction from idea through launch.

Background Context

Marketing work was moving through disconnected paths: informal conversations, inconsistent briefs, scattered documents, and team-specific workflows. As the organization grew more complex, teams needed a clearer way to see what was happening, align before execution, and move work through a shared process.

The opportunity was to create a scalable system that helped teams plan better, collaborate earlier, and execute with less ambiguity.

Core Objectives

The team needed more than a new template or tool. We needed a shared operating model that answered:

  • What work is happening?

  • Why are we doing it?

  • Who needs to be involved?

  • What needs to be created?

  • When is it ready for execution?

  • How does it move through Jira and delivery?

Marketing-wide Project Process

This process created a consistent path from visibility through closure:

Visibility → Strategy + Planning → Execution → Closure

Add to Activity Calendar

Set Goals + Define Strategy


Strategic Alignment

Begin Experience Map


Marketing Leadership Team (MLT) Alignment

Finalize Experience Map

Outline Epics & Tasks

Artifact: Marketing Activity Calendar

I helped introduce a centralized Marketing Activity Calendar as the first step in making work visible across teams. Rather than relying on scattered conversations or siloed planning docs, teams could see marketing activity organized by timeline, business goal, solution, audience, and owner.

My role

  • Helped shape the calendar as a planning and visibility tool

  • Connected activity intake to broader marketing priorities

  • Supported adoption as the starting point for project planning

Value

  • Gave leadership and teams a shared view of upcoming work

  • Helped identify overlaps, dependencies, and competing priorities earlier

  • Made smaller events and activities visible alongside larger campaigns


Artifacts: Lean Canvas Template, Key Messaging + Customer Experience Prompt

Once an activity was visible, teams needed to define the “why” before jumping into deliverables. I helped develop planning tools that encouraged teams to clarify goals, audience needs, customer pain points, messaging intent, and desired outcomes up front.

My role

  • Created structured prompts to guide early thinking

  • Helped shift conversations from “what do we need made?” to “what are we trying to achieve?”

  • Supported marketing partners in connecting business goals to audience experience

Value

  • Reduced vague inputs and incomplete requests

  • Improved the quality of creative and marketing briefs

  • Helped teams align around audience needs before execution

Artifact: Project Process / Planning Map

For larger initiatives, the process created a point for leadership review before teams moved deeper into execution. This helped ensure work was aligned to priorities, resourcing realities, and business value before becoming a fully active project.

My role

  • Helped define where leadership alignment belonged in the process

  • Created materials that made project scope and complexity easier to evaluate

  • Supported a more intentional decision point before execution

Value

  • Reduced churn from unclear or premature project starts

  • Helped prioritize work against business goals

  • Created a shared checkpoint before teams committed resources


Artifact: Experience Planning Map Template

The Experience Map became one of the most important planning tools in the system. It helped teams visualize the full customer journey across pre-launch, launch, and post-launch phases, while connecting objectives, KPIs, deliverables, owners, and supporting teams in one place.

My role

  • Designed the experience mapping framework

  • Helped teams understand the full customer journey before committing to deliverables

  • Connected strategy, messaging, and execution planning in a visual format

Value

  • Made complex initiatives easier to understand

  • Helped teams see how deliverables worked together across the full experience

  • Improved planning conversations before resourcing began

Artifacts: RACIs, Planning Templates

Before work moved forward, teams needed shared alignment on ownership, decision-making, and collaboration points. I helped introduce RACIs and planning guidance to clarify who needed to be involved, when, and why.

My role

  • Helped define ownership and collaboration models

  • Created supporting materials that made roles easier to understand

  • Partnered across functions to reduce ambiguity before kickoff

Value

  • Strengthened accountability

  • Reduced late-stage surprises and conflicting feedback

  • Helped teams collaborate with more confidence and less friction


Artifact: Experience Planning Map Template

After alignment, teams finalized the map with clearer deliverables, timing, ownership, and supporting details. The map became the bridge between strategy and execution, helping teams move from idea to actionable project structure.

My role

  • Helped refine how deliverables were captured and organized

  • Ensured outputs connected back to objectives and KPIs

  • Created guidance for identifying when a deliverable was actually a standalone activity

Value

  • Improved resource planning

  • Helped teams understand deliverable complexity earlier

  • Reduced confusion between campaigns, activities, and individual tasks


Artifacts: Product Launch Standard Deliverables Template, Jira hierarchy visual

Once the experience was mapped, the next step was translating the work into epics, tasks, and deliverables. I helped define a consistent hierarchy so planning artifacts could move cleanly into Jira without losing context.

My role

  • Helped structure the activity-to-task hierarchy

  • Created templates and visual aids to explain how work should break down

  • Supported consistency across marketing teams

Value

  • Made Jira setup clearer and more repeatable

  • Reduced translation gaps between planning and execution

  • Helped project managers and stakeholders understand how work connected

Complete Jira Canned Responses


Artifacts: Jira for Marketing, Standard Requests, SLAs

To improve intake quality, I helped standardize Jira guidance, canned responses, workflow expectations, and service-level agreements across marketing teams. This created a clearer way to route work and request the right information up front.

My role

  • Audited existing workflows across teams

  • Identified commonalities and inconsistencies

  • Helped create standardized language, taxonomy, SLAs, and routing guidance

Value

  • Improved request quality

  • Reduced back-and-forth between requesters and delivery teams

  • Created a more consistent experience for marketing partners

Execute Work

Launch

Debrief & Reporting Summary


Artifacts: Jira workflows, Jira Kanban boards, SLAs, team process pages

With the right inputs in place, teams could move into execution with more clarity. The system helped ensure work entered production with defined goals, owners, timelines, deliverables, and expectations.

My role

  • Connected planning tools to execution workflows

  • Helped teams adopt consistent ways of working

  • Supported training and documentation to reinforce behavior change

Value

  • Reduced ambiguity during production

  • Improved collaboration between marketing partners and delivery teams

  • Helped teams spend less time interpreting requests and more time executing well


Artifacts: Marketing SharePoint Hub, GTM Play Pages, Training Resources

The launch phase connected completed work back to the broader marketing ecosystem. Resources, trainings, campaign materials, and GTM assets were centralized so teams could find, use, and reuse materials more easily.

My role

  • Helped create and structure SharePoint pages and supporting resources

  • Wrote, designed, and organized materials across team pages, GTM play pages, and training hubs

  • Supported launch communications and adoption

Value

  • Improved access to key marketing resources

  • Enabled faster onboarding and self-service

  • Helped teams find the right content without relying on tribal knowledge

Image prompt: Add SharePoint Hub, GTM Play page, or launch feedback screenshot.


Artifacts: Analytics pages, reporting dictionary, attribution guidance

The process closed with reflection and reporting. Marketing teams needed a clearer way to evaluate what happened, understand performance, and use that learning to improve future work.

My role

  • Helped structure documentation around reporting, attribution, and standard analytics requests

  • Supported clearer guidance for sourced and influenced marketing data

  • Connected campaign planning back to measurement and learning

Value

  • Reinforced a continuous improvement loop

  • Helped teams understand performance and attribution more consistently

  • Created stronger alignment between execution, reporting, and future planning

Business Impact

  • Created a shared operating model for marketing work

  • Improved visibility into priorities, timelines, and ownership

  • Strengthened upfront alignment before project execution

  • Reduced ambiguity across intake, planning, and delivery

  • Connected strategy, customer experience, deliverables, Jira, and reporting into one scalable process

Key Reflections

What mattered most

Clarity at the start of the process had the greatest impact on speed, quality, and collaboration.

Lasting insight

The strongest systems do more than organize work. They help teams understand the work, align around it, and move through it with confidence.

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Marketing Operations Audit & Enablement