Supporting a Complex Airline Integration Through Product Delivery
Business Analysis · Product Ownership · UX · Agile Delivery
Overview
As a Business Analyst / Product Owner on the Borealis UX team at Alaska Airlines, I supported the integration of Hawaiian Airlines into Alaska Airlines’ digital experience. My role focused on translating stakeholder needs and integration requirements into actionable work for the UX and Engineering teams. I created and refined Azure DevOps tickets and user stories, clarified requirements and acceptance criteria, and worked with Product Management, UX, Engineering, and Content teams to move work from requirements through delivery.
The Challenge
Integrating Hawaiian Airlines into Alaska Airlines required teams to understand how new business requirements would affect existing digital experiences and workflows. The challenge was turning complex integration requirements into clear, actionable work that different teams could understand and deliver.
Key considerations included:
- Business and stakeholder requirements
- Existing Alaska Airlines experiences
- Hawaiian Airlines integration needs
- User experience considerations
- Technical constraints
- Dependencies between teams
- Delivery priorities
My Role
As a Business Analyst / Product Owner, I worked with the Product Manager, UX, Engineering, and stakeholders to help translate requirements into delivery-ready work. My responsibilities included:
- Translating stakeholder requirements into Azure DevOps tickets
- Creating and refining user stories
- Clarifying requirements with Product Management and stakeholders
- Defining acceptance criteria
- Breaking larger requirements into actionable work
- Managing and prioritizing UX-related backlog items
- Working with designers to clarify experience requirements
- Partnering with Engineering to resolve questions and dependencies
- Participating in backlog refinement and sprint planning
- Supporting work through the delivery process
Tools: Azure DevOps · Figma · Agile / Scrum
From Requirement to Delivery
Stakeholder Need
↓
Requirements
↓
User Story
↓
Acceptance Criteria
↓
UX + Engineering Refinement
↓
Delivery
What I Contributed
My contribution went beyond simply creating tickets. I helped create shared understanding between stakeholders, Product, UX, and Engineering by clarifying:
- What problem are we solving?
- Who is affected?
- What does the experience need to accomplish?
- What needs to happen for the work to be considered complete?
- What dependencies or constraints need to be considered?
This helped transform complex integration requirements into work that could be prioritized, refined, designed, and delivered.
Product + UX
My UX background was particularly valuable in this role. Rather than approaching requirements only from a business or technical perspective, I could also consider how a requirement would affect the user experience and overall workflow. This allowed me to connect:
Business Requirements + User Needs + UX Design + Technical Constraints
to create more actionable product work.
What I Learned
The Hawaiian Airlines integration reinforced the importance of creating clarity early in product development. Complex initiatives require more than defining what to build. Teams also need a shared understanding of why it matters, who it affects, what the experience should accomplish, and what “done” means. This experience expanded my work beyond traditional UX design and strengthened my ability to contribute across product strategy, business analysis, UX, and Agile delivery.
