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A Closer Look at Team Ops and Product Ops (Two Sides of the DesignOps Coin)
Summary
What happens to your DesignOps team when your Design organization hits scale? Juggling the growth of your product, your people, and your processes is a demanding challenge, and strains the jack-of-all-trades skillset of even the most seasoned DesignOps practitioner. This continues the conversation we started at the DesignOps Summit about how we scaled and reshaped our UXOps team at Salesforce into two discrete tracks and we dive deeper into four themes: UX Product & UX Team Ops Design & DesignOps Team Maturity Design Ops Role Clarity and Career Ladders The Future of DesignOps
Key Insights
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Unconventional career paths such as ballet and game design can lead into design operations, bringing diverse perspectives.
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The design maturity model helps determine when to hire dedicated design operations roles, typically around 14-20 designers.
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Design Ops teams face challenges balancing broad responsibilities like onboarding, delivery, culture, and tooling at scale.
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Splitting design Ops into Team Ops (culture, systems, community) and Product Ops (delivery, strategic partnerships) improves clarity and impact.
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Measuring and proving the value of design Ops requires defining clear, discrete, and measurable service offerings aligned to products and teams.
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COVID-19 accelerated global collaboration and forced design Ops teams to adopt experimental communication methods and virtual socialization.
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Maintaining team connections remotely involves virtual coffee chats, stand-ups with fun elements, weekend updates, and design crit-style feedback meetings.
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The future of design Ops may blur roles with PMs and TPMs, focusing more on empowering teams and less on rigid titles.
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Design Ops is evolving from supporting design teams only to influencing broader organizational processes and cultures.
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Intentional, targeted communication and roadshow efforts are vital to re-educate the organization about changes in Ops structures and roles.
Notable Quotes
"My path into design Ops was winding—I started as a professional ballet dancer before falling in love with academia and design."
"Around 14 to 20 designers is usually the tipping point where having a dedicated design ops person starts to make sense."
"If adding a design program manager gives each designer back even one hour a day, you might make your entire team more efficient."
"We realized we were solving problems of a design practice when our organization had actually scaled to an organizational level."
"Trying to do all things well can mean doing all things kind of not so great—specialization became necessary."
"We created separate tracks so people can self-organize, leverage the right skills, and grow their careers in focused ways."
"Our team Ops Charter is about amplifying and celebrating the work and impact of design and design Ops."
"COVID has maybe made us a better global team by forcing us to figure out how to work across time zones and communication preferences."
"Employee experience and customer experience are inextricably tied—operationalizing design Ops impacts both."
"Design Ops might not just support design anymore—our work is requested by non-designers and solving broader business problems."
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