This document discusses Design Operations (DesignOps) and its goals of amplifying the value of design investments and scaling design teams. It describes key aspects of DesignOps including human resources, community, communications, tools, infrastructure, workflow, governance, and culture. Elements like organizational structure, hiring processes, onboarding, and developing a design system are examined. The roles and qualifications for a DesignOps leader are also outlined. Overall, the document provides an overview of DesignOps and its various components for setting teams up for success and increasing an organization's design investment.

1. Design Operations
#DesignOps
Dave Malouf - @daveixd
[07 Dec 2018]

2. Make it pretty

3. Sprint 0

4. #Trigger Warning

5. JIRA

6. Where is […] ?
Reflection
Empathy
Synthesis
Vision
Exploration

7. We know great design when we see it.

8. But do we recognize good designing as easily?

9. Are you sure?

10. Alone or Together or Both?

11. Better designs come
from better designing.

12. We know how to measure designs.

13. But how do we measure designing?

14. What about the right space for doing design?

15. How do we scale quality?
How do we transform
from a silo to a partner?

16. How do we do this
without reducing
our value?

17. Resistance is
Futile
Agile is here and here to
stay. It may even have
good stuff for designers.

18. Culture of
Learning
Lean UX, Balanced Teams
and Modern Agile
• Self-organizing
• Respect skills
• Autonomy &
Accountability
• Empowerment
• Coaching
• Manage/Protect Flow
• Iterative > Contructive

19. Studio Culture
• Off the monitor
• Externalized work
• Empower interruption
• Associative processing
• Abductive thinking
• Construct > Deconstruct
> Re-construct

20. Studio Culture
Deconstructive
Problem Understanding
Getting to the right design
Imagining possible futures
Modern Agile
Constructive
Solution Engineering
Getting the design right
Risk mitigation

22. What is Operations?

23. Everything necessary to support
the activities necessary to
produce value within in a system.

25. Design Operations
#DesignOps; what is it? Why is it?

26. How do we amplify
the value of design
investment, and thus
increase that
investment further?

27. Why DesignOps (now)?
SCALE

28. What are we scaling?
• Team Sizes
• Number of Teams
• Number of Systems
• Types and number of integrations

29. Adding humans
to any system
makes it
infinitely more
complex to do
successfully

30. What is DesignOps?

31. ValuesPrinciplesMission
Processes
Methods
Craft
Workflow
People
Governance Tools & Infrastructure

32. * Human Resources
Career Development
Recognition & Reward
Recruitment
Hiring
Onboarding
Offboarding
* Practice
Principles
Design Language
Methods
ResearchOps**
Critique
Knowledge Mngt
* IT
SSO
Communications
Tech Onboarding
Security compliance
License Mngt
Cloud Resources
LOB Services
Business Operations People Operations
Workflow Operations
HR*
IT*
Tools
Governance
Finance
Legal
Procurement
Community
Practice*
Rituals
Communications
Design System
ResearchOps
Facilities

33. If you have 1 designer you
have Design Operations.
Are you as intentional about it?

34. Untended Tended

36. 1. Set up your team for success
2. Increase the value of your
organization’s investment
in design
Goals of Design Operations:

37. Pieces of
DesignOps
•Human Resources
•Community
•Communications
•Tools
•Infrastructure
•Workflow / Design API
•Governance

38. Human Resources,
Supporting the
people in your
organization.

39. How does/can HR support people?
• Humane and intentional recruitment, hiring, &
onboarding (and offboarding)
• Personal & Team professional development
• Career path, feedback protocols, etc.
• Recognition & reward
• Org structure

40. Organizational
Structure
“Now where should I put
my design organization this
year … ok, this week.?”
•Scaling over time
•Transforming vs.
building
•Cultural issues/values
•Advancing practice(s)

41. If you aren’t working to
get your top design
leader to be a peer with
both engineering and
product you are doing it
wrong.

42. Structure your
design practice to
create the most
value, not based on
who pays for it.

43. Designing Your Organization
• Requires the whole team across functions.
• Based on understanding the value of design
contribution to your organization.
• Guided by a “roadmap” towards a strategic
vision.
• Focus on balancing required skills.

44. The golden ratio
What is the ideal ratio for designers to
engineers?
IBM is working towards 1:8.
Gartner suggests 1:3

45. Ideal ratio for number of
design/research resources
is >1 per product mngr.
— Kaaren Hansen
EnterpriseUX 2017

46. Ratios are bad
- Leisa Reichelt
Head of Research and Insights
Atlassian

47. Developing your team
• Keep team’s skills balanced.
• Move from generalists to specialists as your
organization scales.
• Invest in your people; they deserve it and
you need it.

48. A team that knows who they are and where they can go runs smoothest

49. Hiring Process
• Recruitment
• Pipeline Management
• Interviewing
• Portfolio
• Negotiations

50. Onboarding
• Acceptance to first day
• First day
• Equipment, desk
• Team Lunch
• Benefits & other bureaucracy
• Buddy System
• Knowledge Transfer

51. Community of
Practice.
Inside and outside of
your organization.

52. Developing a Community of Practice
• Share and learn from each other and beyond.
• Increase total design quality.
• Develop & maintain values, principles, and
mission.
• Create an environment that drives
engagement and connection.

53. Communication is
the core method of
transparency.
Knowledge is both
power and stability.

54. Issues in Communication
• Maintaining a history
• Change management
• Knowledge transfer
• Visibility cross-functionally
• Visibility into and from the executive team(s)
• Visibility across the design organization

55. The largest obstacle
to design success is
the misalignment of
the value proposition
that design itself
provides an
organization.

56. Communication
Methods
• Meetings
• 1:1’s
• All-hands
• Standups
• Off-sites & team training
• Critiques & Reviews
• Chat
• Wiki
• Ticketing and tracking

57. Craft starts and
ends with the tools
available and used.

58. Issues in Tools selection
• Boring stuff: Price, Legal, Security, Performance,
Platform(s)
• Interoperability of formats
• Enabling remote & collaborative experiences
• To SaaS or not to SaaS
• Workflow with other designers and non-designers.

59. Partner with IT &
Procurement to
empower managers
and individual
contributors.

60. Workflow
connections teams.
Decisions are made
in the workflow
system.

61. Workflow
Your individual
and team API
•The connections and
processes that move to go.
•Contributing to
continuous delivery &
learning.
•Connecting tools to make
a post-modern factory.

62. Pieces of workflow
Triggers
What questions do you need answered?
What questions do you need to answer?
People
For/with/by whom>
Activities
How does someone achieve answers?
Tooling
What tools are need and how do they
connect?
Channels
What deliverables and where/how are
they communicated?
Governance
What are and who evaluates the
success/acceptance criteria for activity?
Trust vs. Control
Support
What is needed outside of the activity to
make sure the activity can take place?

64. Governance is the basis
for decision making.
The rules you choose to
make and how you make
them will be your culture.

65. Governance matters
• Decision making
• Autonomy & empowerment
• Risk management
• Security & Privacy
• Compliance

66. Design Systems &
Pattern Libraries
What problem are you
trying to solve?
• Who is it for?
• Who set out the
requirements for it?
• What are the
success criteria?

67. Why Design Systems?
• They help scale your design team throughout the
enterprise.
• They help maintain consistency and coherency
throughout a complex application suite.
• They increase efficiencies in both design and
development.
• They can aid in connecting design to the CI/CD workflow.

68. Parts is Parts
• Style & Voice Guide
(assets & docs)
• Pattern Library
(assets & docs)
• Component library
(Code & docs)

69. Issues in Design Systems
• It can’t be seen as a bottleneck
• It has to flow through stages of
implementation.
• Version & Deployment Management.

70. Design Systems can act as governance
• Implement responsive (mobile friendly)
• Implement accessibility

71. Once a design system
needs to support
multiple teams it
starts to become a
product of its own.

72. Products need
dedicated teams
Not all are full-time
• Product Manager
• Dev Lead
• FE Engineer
• Lead IxD
• Visual Designer
• Usability Engineer

73. Culture
Put a bow on it
Take the culture of
learning, and infuse it
with empathy,
inclusion, and vision.

74. Culture broken down
Values
Moral and ethical code. Talks about our
relationships between humans, planet,
business.
Principles
Helps us evaluate what we’ve made.
Is it good? Does it set us apart?
Are we improving quality?
Mission
What do we want to achieve as a
design team? As a complete
organization?
Vision
If we reach our mission how will we
know we go there? What does
success look like? What measures
does it have?

75. Where is it found?
What are we empowered to do?
What are we kept from doing?
How do we make decisions?
What rituals do we have?
How do we recognize and reward?

76. Design
Operations Leader
•The role needs to start
immediately.
•1st by the head of design,
•Then a part-time role of a
line manager.
•Finally a full-time
position

77. The role includes
Team project mngt
Team communications
Team culture mngt
Team wide critiques
Procurement lead
Recruiting lead
Design system owner
Team IT Administration

78. Qualifications for a Design Operations Leader
Systems: can map flows, relationships, and goals to
understand complexity and communicate it clearly.
Design depth: Community depth to gain insights. Plus
personal experience to extrapolate solutions.
Relationships: Needs to be able to build a wide net around
themselves to align and influence.
Understanding & Alignment: facilitate differing view
points to drive organizations towards action.

79. How are we structured?What constrains us?
What do we do? How do we communicate?Who are we?
What else?

80. Making it happen
• Boil bays > sounds > gulfs > seas > oceans
• Be sure to include and collaborate
• Drill hard into aligning value and meaning
• Measure continuously, adjust accordingly
• Imagine success and work to make it happen

81. Dave Malouf
me@davemalouf.com
@daveixd
http://medium.com/@daveixd
DesignOps on WeChat
Contact Yushi Wang
For more info:
yushi@uxoffer.com