Alex Harris — Optimizely Expert

Get more from the Optimizely you already have.

I’ve spent more than a decade helping teams connect experimentation, personalization, customer data, content and now AI around the problem they actually need to solve, not the products they already own.

Experimentation and personalization leader · Optimizely MVP since 2022

What the job actually looks like
  • Experience
    • CMS
    • Commerce
    • Personalization
  • Learn
    • Web Experimentation
    • Feature Experimentation / Full Stack
    • Analytics and behavioral evidence
  • Know the customer
    • ODP
    • Profiles
    • Audiences
    • Behavioral and customer data
  • Operate content
    • CMP
    • Planning and workflows
    • Approvals
    • Reusable content
  • Automate the work
    • Opal / Agent Platform
    • Specialized agents
    • Virtual Teammates
    • MCP and integrations
Business decisionWhat should change, for whom, why, and what should happen next?
Five connected systems, one decision at the center. Not a stack of separate SKUs.
  • 10+Years hands-on with Optimizely
  • 20+Onboarding engagementsNamed resource in the co-delivery program
  • 2019Co-delivery launch teamPartner onboarding for Optimizely’s new customers
  • 2022Optimizely MVP since

  • Decision rules adopted

    A large university’s enrollment leadership adopted the experiment decision rules I rewrote. The governance story

  • A campaign redirected

    A customer-data check showed a growth list held no current members, so the campaign became win-back. The data story

  • Agent usage made observable

    Instrumented a day of post-test analysis to see where Opal credits were going, then tuned the workflow. The telemetry story

  • Programs onboarded

    Named on 20+ co-delivery onboardings and owner of the packaged Web onboarding offer. How it worked

The job

The job I usually end up doing isn’t a product name.

Customers rarely have an Optimizely-only problem. They have a business problem, an Optimizely subscription, and a stack of other tools that don’t always agree about who the customer is.

Customer outcomeThe decision the business needs to make better

Optimizely

  • Experimentation
  • Personalization
  • ODP
  • CMS
  • CMP
  • Opal

Evidence

  • Web analytics
  • Behavior analytics
  • Research

The testing tool almost always had an analytics tool next to it.

Customer data

  • CRM
  • Customer data platform
  • Warehouse
  • Identity

Activation

  • Email and lifecycle
  • Commerce
  • Sales channels

Operations

  • Content workflow
  • Ticketing and project tools
  • Governance

These showed up as programs matured, not on day one.

Where I sit: between the people who own the decision and the people who build it

  1. Marketing and productDecide what the business needs to change
  2. MeConnect the signals, decide what Optimizely should own, what it shouldn’t
  3. Engineering and dataBuild the parts Optimizely can’t
  4. The customer’s own teamRun it without me once it’s proven
Categories, not a checklist. No customer had every one of these, and the mix changed as programs grew.

Where I usually find the opportunity

Owning Optimizely and running it well are two different problems.

These are the situations that come up most, and where to see how I’ve handled each one.

  • You’re running tests, but…

    Teams disagree on what counts as a winner. How I fixed the decision rule

  • You have Web + Feature, but…

    Ownership changes halfway through the customer journey. The architecture that fixed it

  • You have customer data, but…

    You haven’t proved who deserves a different experience yet. How I decide

  • You have Opal, but…

    Agents are getting built without enough visibility into workflow, authority or usage. How I instrument it

  • You have content and campaign teams, but…

    Too much repeatable review and coordination is still manual. The review workflow

One customer journey

The architecture problem that shows up the most.

An insurance company retiring its old testing tool during a multi-country migration needed Web and Feature to own different parts of the same quote journey, measured as one visitor, not two programs.

See the full architecture and the governance that shipped with it →

Platform depth

Where my hands-on depth actually is.

Open any capability to see what I actually did with it. The labels are deliberately conservative: a demo counts as exposure, and one configured teammate counts as a prototype.

  • BUILT
  • ONBOARDED
  • SOLUTION DESIGNED
  • INTEGRATED
  • PROTOTYPED
  • ADVISED
  • EXPOSURE
  • Web ExperimentationONBOARDEDSOLUTION DESIGNEDINTEGRATED

    Where most of my Optimizely years went: onboarding, program design, governance and delivery.

    Experimentation Certified Strategist 2025

  • Feature Experimentation / Full StackONBOARDEDSOLUTION DESIGNED

    Server-side and feature-flag programs across product teams, and the call on when to use it instead of Web.

  • PersonalizationONBOARDEDSOLUTION DESIGNED

    Campaigns inside onboarding programs, and the discipline of deciding when a segment has earned its own experience.

  • Optimizely Data Platform (ODP)SOLUTION DESIGNEDINTEGRATED

    Identity between a public site and a member portal, audience checks, consent and reachability.

  • CMSSOLUTION DESIGNEDADVISED

    Client work alongside developers: QA, templates, forms, audience planning.

  • CMS (SaaS)BUILTPROTOTYPEDINTEGRATED

    Built pages through the content API, verified through Graph, and an MCP integration over the REST API.

  • CMPPROTOTYPEDINTEGRATED

    The human approval step inside agent workflows.

    CMP Certified Administrator 2025

  • Content RecommendationsADVISED

    Part of connected-platform designs; not a deep hands-on area.

  • Product RecommendationsEXPOSURE

    Enablement exposure only.

  • CommerceADVISED

    B2B commerce as part of a manufacturer’s data and account picture.

  • Opal / Agent PlatformBUILTPROTOTYPEDSOLUTION DESIGNEDINTEGRATED

    Agents, tools, skills, workflows and approval gates, plus advice on where not to use it.

    Agent Platform Certified Administrator, Tools Certified, Development Accredited (2025)

  • Virtual TeammatesPROTOTYPED

    Configured one, connected to a read-only system.

  • 1:1 / autonomous experiencesPROTOTYPEDEXPOSURE

    Built rule-driven personal pages; learned Optimizely’s autonomous method as a partner. That product is theirs.

Credentials

Optimizely MVP since 2022.

Credentials support the story. They aren’t the story, so here they are in one place.

  • Optimizely MVP since 2022Recognition, Strategy
  • Optimizely Experimentation Certified Strategist 2025Certification
  • Optimizely Agent Platform (Opal) Certified Administrator 2025Certification
  • Optimizely Agent Platform (Opal) Tools Certified 2025Certification
  • Optimizely Agent Platform (Opal) Development AccreditedAccreditation
  • Optimizely CMP Certified Administrator 2025Certification

The co-delivery team needed someone who’d already been doing this work by hand for years. That’s still how I start every program.

Next chapterMy Optimizely Story

View my resumeLinkedIn

Optimizely and related product names are trademarks of their owner. This section reflects my own professional experience with the platform. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Optimizely, and client examples are described by industry, not by name.