Henning, thanks again for the plug during the conference - I thought I'd post what I learned from the discussion on org design.

Part of my interest in coming to the MX conference was to learn how UX teams operate in other companies. I’m building out a UX function at my company and wanted to get after 3 key questions:

1) How is the team funded?
2) Where does it fit within the organization?
3) How do you measure the team’s success?

I spoke with folks from eBay, Phizer, Misys, Cisco, Univision, and Nokia. Not a huge sample size, but I did find some patterns emerge:

1) UX teams are funded centrally. In some cases, individual product lines will pay the central team for services. The key ingredient to start a UX team seemed to be having an Executive Sponsor and getting them passionate about it. Funding and enforcement of UX best practices then follow.
2) UX teams generally report to product lines. This may have been obvious for some, but I had questioned whether a UX function might report into a central Marketing or IT function. As I move forward with in selling this concept within my company, I’ll target General Managers – less focus on the CMO or CIO.
3) The question on measuring success brought a variety of answers, but the two common ones were Usability Metrics and Design Patterns. Usability Metrics – great quantifiable way to show improvements over existing products. Design Patterns – building out a library of reusable design (and hopefully reusable code). Other items discussed but perhaps not as quantifiable – avoiding rework, redirecting poor product concepts, or outright killing them.

Thanks again for helping to coordinate the discussion.