Unifying Two Platforms Into One Product Experience
Goal: End three years of a fragmented ACG and Skills experience with one unified platform – ASAP, and without erasing ACG’s specialist value.
Task: I unified two separate platforms, ACG (A Cloud Guru) and Pluralsight, into one product experience in 10 months, ending 3 years of stalled integration attempts.
Company Context:
Pluralsight is a multi-sided enterprise learning platform that ran ACG at a separate platform/URL for years after acquiring it in 2021.
- 146 ACG courses, labs, and Playground migrated into one Pluralsight catalog
- ACG’s own hands-on features out-engaged Pluralsight roughly 5x before the fix (40% labs / 14% Playground vs under 8%)
- ~1,000 customers held both ACG and Pluralsight subscriptions at once
- My Team: 5+ product squads, 6 Learning Experience product areas
General stats: ~500,000 active learners, ~$400M ARR, search API handling ~4.4M queries a month
3 Years -> 10 Months
From stalled company attempts to a unified platform
4.5K -> 9K Lab Users
Engaged users after integration
450 -> 700 New Labs
Increased labs on the unified platform
+1.3% Content Starts
Via simplifying access
Project Summary:
- The Ask: unify two trusted but separate platforms, ACG and Pluralsight, into one experience. ASAP!
- The Problem: three years of stalled attempts; ACG out-engaged Pluralsight 5x in hands-on use, and all the content lived on a separate platform and URL.
- The System Fix: internal alignment, a scoped migration plan, and shared ownership across Labs, Reports, and Curation.
- The Output: one Pluralsight experience, unified in 10 months: ACG content, labs, playground, and certifications native inside Pluralsight.
- The Outcomes: lab engagement 4.5K → 9K | annual lab production 450 → 700 | Content Start Rate +1.3%
*Drag the center divider left or right to compare the before and after state
*Click on each picture to see details of the different pages ACG migrated into
Problem:
Operating Context:
Reported to the CPO, one of three design directors, no added headcount for this work. Two platforms (separate URLs), eleven workstreams and fourteen teams already split across departments, divisions, and squads. The work to unify platforms had been unsuccessful for 3 years.
“The technical teams and each squad kept going around and around about the best way to do this [unite ACG with Pluralsight], but it turned out that what we really needed to light the fire was a little research and a g*ddamn plan the execs could get behind. Thanks, Skye.”
– R.B, VP of Engineering (and my engineering partner), in a leadership meeting
Access friction
- Learners crossed an app switcher to reach content they already paid for
- For every 1 person who found and used labs on Pluralsight, roughly 5 people did the same thing over on ACG
Organizational Fragmentation
- Eleven workstreams, fourteen teams, 31% of total product and engineering capacity
- Each technical squad devoted to one experience, each with its own roadmap.
Business Exposure
- $24M and $8M ARR renewal was actively at risk for two enterprise companies
- A top-100 account was already citing the dual-platform experience as active friction.
The original plan was four sequential releases, safer on paper because it spread technical risk over time. The real cost was that the interim state, half-migrated, still on two platforms, was costing the company customers and it was the opposite of value for them.
When my product and engineering partner and I brought the executive team research around what customers wanted, and then showed them the cost (in retention) of delay, they let their plans change mid-flight. Having that information and knowing what they needed to hear to make a good decision is what made me a great leader for this project.
Not migrating ACG into Pluralsight’s IA and content model would have been a failure.
Playbook:
What I Did
- Aligned internal stakeholders & executives
- Integrated ACG content into Pluralsight’s existing system and taxonomy
- Rebuilt critical functionality for labs, to achieve parity with ACG functionality
- Created a dedicated landing page to minimize customer confusion (before and after the merger)
Internal Alignment & Resourcing
Moved decisions from departments to divisions even into the squads
Customer-focused Navigation
ACG wanted a central place for all their content, but I used Pluralsight’s taxonomy and integrated ACG content. Research showed learners searched for “labs,” not “ACG labs” or “Pluralsight labs.” (This is the call that kept the redesign from reproducing the org chart)
Rebuilt Lab Backend
Adopted ACG’s approach and hardened backend security for highly technical users
Dedicated Landing Page
For newly migrated users: this page helped them find their favorite content. This page also assisted new users who could not tell Labs, Playground, and Sandboxes apart without help. (This page is so useful it’s still live today.)
After: one unified platform
Tradeoffs: What came off the plan, and who gave it up
- ACG’s technical squads. Gave up a single, unified, source-branded home for content they had built and owned. It was distributed across Pluralsight’s existing categories instead.
It was a blow to the company that spent years making a highly technical platform with rigor, accommodating special needs. Pluralsight kept the great thinking behind ACG’s labe and sandboxes, changing them enough to fit into the platforms structure but preserving the specialized technical requirements.
First, there was an executive who was responsible for different parts of the migration – but only one.
Second, we unified the mission of the individual divisions/ product areas across eng, product and design. This gave us all a single island to row our boats toward.
Third, I moved a lot of the decisions from departments to divisions then down into the squads
- Danaan Clarke ran cross-team alignment and a weekly design sync across the effort.
- Rose Cox and Alli Clark owned the Reports and Curation integration tracks.
- Bryon owned the Hands-On Labs integrated-experience direction.
Results:
Outputs:
One Pluralsight experience: ACG content, labs, playground, and certifications native inside Pluralsight
Major release shipped in 4 months, full integration in 10
Eleven workstreams and fourteen teams aligned to one plan instead of separate department roadmaps
Outcomes:
New labs produced
Engagement, retention, content start all up
Labs usage on Pluralsight skyrocketed past previous/ ACG levels.
We placed hands-on content inside a taxonomy where learners already looked for it
In this way, every new and existing user got an intuitive place to find labs, sandboxes, and certification prep, regardless of which company (Pluralsight or ACG) built it first.
Current Status (a/o Q4 2026)
- Pluralsight describes ACG courses, labs, and sandboxes as part of one unified solution.
- Legacy ACG plans are no longer sold; the old URL and platform have been removed.
I build senior capability by handing people the work one level above them, with cover, using my own projects. This way, they get to work directly with me, division leaders and the executive team on something that matters to the business.
- 2 jr designers were promoted in the next 2 years, largely based in the impact their work had on the business.
- Our Staff designer moved into management during this project, overseeing 2 sr designers.
Lesson:
What did I get wrong here, and where did I fix it?
Mistake: Technical issues can be symptoms of internal confusion
Because of the highly technical nature of the labs domain, I was content to let the technical people make the calls. But 3 years of spin is too long to wait for someone else to decide.
But many of the underlying issues were ones that product and design are uniquely capable of informing and guiding, so sitting back would have been a mistake.
The Fix: Diagnose the symptoms, find the systemic problem, move forward together
I partnered closely with my engineering partners to understand the domain knowledge. In so doing, I understood what research design could bring to the table to move decisions forward into a plan. My product partner was happy to work with me to align the internal org.
It never hurts to put forward the first plan, and then ask for help understanding the nuances. In my next project, Bring Your Own Content, I didn’t hesitate to create a coalition of the willing and move forward quickly with an initial plan, leading to us reaching a NO GO opinion quickly, wasting minimal time and money.
Project Information
Post-Merger Product Unification
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Design
October 2023 to May 2026
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Client
Pluralsight. B2B SaaS, EdTech. Acquired A Cloud Guru in 2021.
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My Role Then
Director of Product Design, then Director, UX Product Design and Research. Reported to the CPO.
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Scope & Span
Hands-On Labs and six Learning Experience product areas across 5+ product squads.
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Team & Reach
8 direct reports in a 15-person Learning Experience org with 2 managers. (Product, engineering, content, and platform partners did not report to me.)
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Platform Type
B2B SaaS, multi-sided (Enterprise admin, individual learner, internal authoring)
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Status (a/o Q4 '26)
Pluralsight describes ACG courses, labs, and sandboxes as part of one unified solution. (Legacy ACG plans are no longer sold.)
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Tags
Change Management, Cross-Org Alignment, Enterprise Adoption, Platform Coherence, Post-Acquisition Integration, Team Capability