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case study

Smarter
Learning Ops
for a Major University

Operational Excellence in L&D with Cognota

Background

The University of Phoenix is a leader in adult education with over 3,400 employees and a strong focus on supporting working professionals through accessible, career-aligned learning. Internally, the Learning and Development (L&D) team manages a high volume of cross-functional requests from departments like ethics, compliance, and regulatory affairs.

Before implementing Cognota, the L&D team relied on Jira—a tool not designed for learning operations. Intake was inconsistent, capacity planning was nonexistent, and reporting required significant manual effort. There was limited visibility into what the team was working on, making it difficult to communicate status updates or justify resource needs to leadership.

THE CHALLENGE

Low Visibility and Lack of Operational Structure

Key challenges included:

  • Intake requests lacked prioritization or structure
  • No ability to assess team capacity before accepting new work
  • Limited visibility across team members and stakeholder projects
  • Manual dashboards and inconsistent reporting
  • Difficulty aligning work with strategic priorities and resource availability
“We had no idea how much we were doing—or if we could take on more. Everything came in, and we tried to do it all.”

Bekah Roberts, Program Manager of Talent Management, described the environment as reactive and disconnected:

The LearnOps Transformation

In April 2024, the University of Phoenix began migrating from Jira to Cognota to centralize L&D operations. The implementation was completed in six months, driven entirely by the internal L&D team.

Illustration of the Cognota LearnOps ecosystem connecting community, platform and services

Sunset of Jira

Migrated in-progress projects into Cognota for hands-on onboarding and team training

Team-Led Change Management

Identified early adopters to shape templates and best practices

Structured Rollout

Trained leaders first, then onboarded the broader team, followed by key stakeholders

Cross-Functional Visibility

Provided stakeholders with project access, reducing email back-and-forth and improving transparency

Monthly Reporting

Leveraged Cognota data to deliver dashboards to the CHRO and executive leadership

The transformation created a single source of truth for L&D projects, intake, and capacity—all while maintaining high team engagement.

The Results

Business Impact

Executive Dashboards and Reporting

  • Monthly L&D dashboards now go directly to the CHRO and VP
  • Data informs resource requests and business cases for new headcount
  • Greater trust and transparency with leadership
“Now we can say we worked on 48 projects, completed 11, and received 12 new requests—before, we could only guess.”

Capacity-Based Decision-Making

  • Cognota enables go/no-go decisions based on resource capacity
  • Intake requests are prioritized by criticality (e.g., compliance vs. branding)
  • Backlogs are now visible, structured, and managed proactively
“We finally have the data to say what we can and can’t take on—and why.”

Streamlined Collaboration with Stakeholders

  • Departments like compliance and regulatory have self-serve access to project status
  • Communication cycles are shorter, and updates are centralized
  • Stakeholders contribute directly to project notes and context
“Instead of playing telephone, stakeholders go into Cognota and see status updates in real time.”

What’s Next

Looking ahead, the University of Phoenix plans to expand Cognota usage across additional L&D functions. The team is:

  • Exploring Cognota’s facilitation module to manage instructor-led delivery and optimize facilitator workloads
  • Preparing to adopt reporting widgets for real-time executive access to dashboards
  • Considering a pilot of Cognota’s Evaluation feature to build measurement practices for learning impact

“We’re excited to bring our facilitation team into Cognota and get full visibility into their capacity too. The future is about scaling impact with data at the center.”

Case Study: University of Phoenix

Case Study: University of Phoenix