Case Study:
Collibra Supersite

Collibra is a data intelligence company that helps large organizations understand, trust, and govern their data.

Collibra's digital presence was disjointed, off-brand, and frustrating.

The company hosted several online destinations (a developer portal, a resource library, a marketplace, and a community forum) with wide variations in branding, user experience, and security protocols. Customer complaints were at an all-time high.

A unified 'supersite' had been the goal for over a year and a half, but the initiative had never gained traction.

My job was to define success, formulate a plan, and build a team around it.

Getting there would take time and thoughtfulness. We needed to think big in discovery and development, and be precise in definition and delivery.

I conducted 30 one-hour interviews across product, marketing, security, community, support, and more. One idea rose to the surface:

For customers, it's ALL Collibra.

The aggregate of the digital experiences we present is, in the mind of the audience, our product. We had found our why.

The project wasn't stuck on ideas. It was stuck on operations. I'd seen it before. The team was bright, capable, and driven, with a genuine desire to do meaningful work. But everything was an emergency, and without clear visibility, process, or resources, people couldn't do what they did best.
 

Many teams make the mistake of jumping straight into development, skipping the thinking that should come first. Weak ideas, vague plans, unsatisfying delivery. You can pay a little upfront or a lot at the end. In my experience, it's always better to pay a little upfront.

My proposal to the C-suite was simple: give me one day a week. Creative and Development would work together every Friday with no other meetings and no other priorities. I was confident we could ship in three months (starting with a logged-out presence, a universal credential module, and a logged-in portal page) and that no other deadlines would slip.

Those three deliverables would unlock everything that followed, including a branding and implementation guide and a regular cadence of cross-team collaboration.

We delivered on experience, brand, and process. The team worked in two-week sprints, with designated points of contact in every department and recurring consultations to keep everyone aligned.

I created visual design mockups and UX flows to guide development, and in the absence of a producer, I drafted milestones and tracked progress. We knew what we were building, why we were building it, and exactly where we stood at every step.

We did what we promised, and then some. Customer complaints dropped, team velocity increased, and we hit every marketing deliverable along the way. We met our stretch goals, handled every urgent ask, and rolled out a full brand refresh concurrently.

The core of the supersite is still live five years later. The best part was the team we built along the way, finally empowered to do their best work.