Walmart Associate Experience · 2025–2026

Associate Experience Portfolio Strategy

UX Leadership Product Strategy Enterprise Systems Portfolio Prioritization Accessibility Strategy

I turned a fragmented, roughly 80-touchpoint associate-experience portfolio into a visible decision system, helping teams prioritize accessibility risk while giving leadership a scalable model for where deeper support and investment would create the most value.

One Reorg and a Portfolio That Grew Overnight

3 grew to 5: Teams
16 grew to 70+: Designers
~10 grew to ~80: Touchpoints
1: Decision system

From Scattered Requests to a Decision System

From a fragmented portfolio to a visible decision system: roughly eighty scattered touchpoints, a few flagged as risky, resolve into two organized lanes - a smaller funded support lane with one highlighted claims-related touchpoint, and a larger baseline support lane. — Roughly 80 fragmented touchpoints, resolved into two clear lanes of support - with the claims-related touchpoint routed into funded work.

One Organization, ~80 Touchpoints, No Shared View of Risk

A reorganization pulled a large set of associate-experience products into one newly consolidated organization - internal tools, public-facing experiences, required workflows, and shared systems, some brand new to the teams now responsible for them. Overnight, my accessibility scope grew from 3 teams and 16 designers to 5 teams and 70+ designers across an organization with 5 directors, and the portfolio I was responsible for jumped from roughly 10 touchpoints to about 80.

The visible problem was fragmented accessibility coverage - some products supported, others never assessed, and no single view of the portfolio. The real problem was that leadership had no shared way to see risk, compare priorities, and decide where deeper support should go. A portfolio-strategy problem, not a compliance backlog.

I Reframed “Run a Gap Analysis” Into “Build a Decision System”

My manager suggested a gap analysis might help. I translated that into a broader strategy: make the portfolio visible, define a risk-based way to prioritize, and design a support structure that could scale across the new organization.

I personally built a working inventory and ran a deliberately high-level assessment across roughly 80 touchpoints - not a deep audit, but enough to make the landscape visible - and paired it with one-on-one interviews with each portfolio director. The inventory made the portfolio visible; the conversations surfaced context a spreadsheet could not.

What the first-pass inventory captured

what each touchpoint was, and who it served
internal or public-facing
approximate reach and ownership
known risk or support signals
where deeper review might be justified

The Sharpest Risk Came From a Conversation, Not a Spreadsheet

During director interviews, one surfaced a claims-related associate touchpoint with elevated legal and user-risk exposure - because users could already be mid-claim, accessibility barriers there carried a different level of risk than a typical internal workflow. That touchpoint moved into funded support.

That is the part that proves the method: I was not collecting product names, I was building a discovery process that could surface hidden risk, translate it into priority, and connect it to a support decision.

What I Designed and Led

I personally designed and led:

the roughly 80-touchpoint portfolio inventory and high-level assessment model
director discovery conversations
a two-layer risk-and-impact prioritization model
baseline and funded support lanes
priority-movement criteria for executive priority, major initiatives, immediate needs, or elevated risk
change-management language to explain why one product got deeper support while another stayed lighter

How Work Was Prioritized

The model worked in two layers: it first protected work that couldn’t be ignored - essential, high-reach, and public-facing surfaces - then compared everything else on shared factors, making leadership judgment visible and defensible instead of a loudest-voice exercise.

Two-layer prioritization diagram showing automatic high-priority signals, comparative prioritization factors, and leadership calibration moving work into baseline or funded support. — Two-layer prioritization logic: high-priority signals, comparative risk factors, and leadership calibration shaping support decisions.

Diagram details: prioritization logic

The diagram shows a two-layer decision process for prioritizing accessibility support across a large portfolio.

Layer one identifies work that needs elevated attention because it is essential, high-reach, public-facing, legally sensitive, or difficult for users to avoid.
Layer two compares other work using factors such as reach, pattern reuse, shared-system impact, complexity, known accessibility risk, leadership priority, major initiative timing, and immediate need.
Leadership calibration makes strategic exceptions visible instead of leaving them implicit.
The output routes work into either baseline support or funded support.

Two Lanes of Support, So Every Team Had a Floor

Baseline support was the floor for every product - minimum expectations, shared standards, and a path to escalate - while funded support went to critical, higher-risk, or higher-impact work. It avoided both bad extremes: treating every product as equally specialist-hungry, or leaving lower-priority teams with nothing.

Two-lane support model diagram showing baseline support for all teams and deeper funded support for higher-risk or higher-impact work. — Two-lane support model: baseline support for every team, funded support for higher-risk or higher-impact work.

Diagram details: two-lane support model

The diagram shows how the portfolio strategy separated support into two lanes while keeping every product visible.

Baseline support applies across the portfolio through minimum expectations, shared standards, training, pattern guidance, and a way to escalate if risk changes.
Funded support applies to critical workflows, higher-risk experiences, public-facing surfaces, shared systems, major initiatives, or immediate needs.
Funded work can receive deeper design review, manual testing, annotation support, office hours, cross-functional follow-through, and clearer review paths.
The model prevents an all-or-nothing support pattern by giving every team a lane and a path to deeper help.

Outcome: Decision Infrastructure

The strongest outcome was a durable capability - not a revenue or cost figure, but a system the organization could keep using.

Roughly 80 touchpoints became a portfolio that could be discussed as a system instead of scattered requests.
Leadership gained a defensible way to compare risk and decide where deeper support should go.
Every team had a baseline instead of an all-or-nothing model, with a path into funded support for higher-risk work.
A claims-related associate touchpoint moved into funded support after director discovery surfaced it.
Teams began pulling on the work directly - asking for materials to share with peers outside funded support, and for help making the proactive case earlier.
The work reframed accessibility as product quality rather than a compliance checkbox, clarifying that accessible components still require flow-level review.