Situation
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)kidney program struggled with siloed services and fragmented user experiences across multiple platforms. Users and internal stakeholders had difficulty understanding how different systems related or overlapped, leading to inefficiencies and confusion.
An ecosystem is a network of people interacting with products or services. Ecosystems include users, the practices they perform, the information they use and share, the people with whom they interact, the services available to them, the devices they use, and the channels through which they communicate.
Obstacle
A lack of a shared ecosystem map caused isolated decision-making and redundant functionality. Teams operated independently, with no unified language for how interfaces and processes connected. Leadership lacked a clear starting point for aligning technology investments and UX priorities.
Action
- Conducted stakeholder interviews and ecosystem mapping workshops to document existing tools, user journeys, and pain points across departments.
- Created a holistic “experience ecosystem map” that visualized every user touchpoint, backend system, and organizational owner.
- Co-facilitated cross-functional alignment sessions using the map to identify missing links, redundant systems, and integration opportunities.
- • Partnered with product, engineering, and ops leads to turn mapping insights into prioritized roadmap items, governance guidelines, and UX patterns.
Result
- Delivered a shared ecosystem map that became the single source of truth for product and UX strategy.
- Saved at least one sprint's worth of planning time by ncreasing effective collaboration and efficiencies.
- Enabled a formal governance process where every new service is reviewed against the map to maintain coherence.
Reflection
This engagement underscored the power of systems thinking in experience design. By making interdependencies visible and engaging stakeholders in mapping, we shifted from siloed execution to ecosystem coherence. It taught me that aligning teams around a shared visual framework can catalyze both strategic clarity and operational transformation. A bit more elaboration can be found in the following video (see 1.15s mark) promoting the Center of Excellence: