Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Developing and Deploying Your Design Operations Strategy
Gold
Tuesday, September 24, 2024 • DesignOps 2024
Share the love for this talk
Developing and Deploying Your Design Operations Strategy
Speakers: Cassandra Piester
Link:

Summary

As Design Operations leaders, we are constantly playing a game of breadth verses depth. It can be easy to get caught diving deep into fire drills or one-off problems, and never having time to scale your efficient operations to the greater team. In this talk, Cassandra will guide you through the process of defining and deploying an operational strategy. With this strategy, you will scale the impact of design operations without increasing the size of your program management team. She'll provide tips on how to get buy in from your key stakeholders to ensure their investment and guarantee their adoption of your strategy as their own. With this practical toolset, you can define your operational vision, empower yourself and your partners to deploy it, and finally get yourself the bandwidth you’ve needed to be more strategic.

Key Insights

  • Design operations teams often juggle firefighting, making strategic thinking challenging.

  • A design operation strategy serves as both the foundation and protective structure for design teams.

  • Most teams already possess pieces of process documentation; leverage these instead of reinventing the wheel.

  • Early documentation of roles and responsibilities, even if rough, builds clarity and secures early stakeholder feedback.

  • Including cross-functional partners transforms design ops from a siloed activity to an org-wide collaboration.

  • Framing team problems as 'How might we...' questions helps focus solution brainstorming.

  • A single source of truth for roadmaps can reduce siloed planning and illuminate dependencies.

  • Quarterly milestone planning bridges the gap between annual roadmaps and sprint-level details.

  • Scaling design ops means moving from tactical process creation to strategic facilitation and organizational alignment.

  • The process of design operations improvement is cyclical and continuous, not linear or one-off.

Notable Quotes

"Our small but mighty design operations team often gets stuck jumping from fire drill to fire drill."

"A design operation strategy is the foundation your team sits upon and also the roof above its head."

"You don’t have to reinvent the wheel — pieces of the puzzle already exist."

"Ugly is actually better. I’m a champion of ugly decks."

"Share early, share ugly is our mantra."

"Make sure you include your cross-functional partners to turn a design-only process into a whole org collaboration."

"How might we communicate status consistently across multiple teams, geographical locations, and leaders?"

"A single source of truth lets you visualize dependencies and ensure work happens in the right sequence."

"Scaling means you move from updating Kanban tickets to doing executive-level status updates and managing portfolio priorities."

"Operations have to be constantly improving, like product development — this process is cyclical, not linear."

Ask the Rosenbot
Daniel Orbach
Zero to One: Co-Creating Operating Models with your Team
2024 • DesignOps 2024
Gold
Jennifer Strickland
Fireside Chat: How Design Addresses a World on Fire (Videoconference)
2022 • Civic Design Community
Jose Coronado
People First - Design at JP Morgan
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Louis Rosenfeld
Founder’s Welcome
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Peter Merholz
Customer-Centered Design Organizations
2017 • Enterprise Experience 2017
Gold
Hana Nagel
Turning Research Ripples into Waves
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Anna Avrekh
Expert Panel: Leading in and with Research
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Bria Alexander
Opening Remarks
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Tamara Hale
War Stories LIVE! Tamara Hale
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Andrea Gallagher
The Problem Space (Videoconference)
2019 • Advancing Research Community
John Mortimer
Panel Discussion
2024 • Advancing Service Design 2024
Gold
Kathleen Asjes
Research Democratization: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Maria Skaaden
Panel Discussion: Methodologies and Work Environments
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Jonathan Fairman
Integrating generative AI into enterprise products: A case study from dscout
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Feleesha Sterling
Building a Rapid Research Program (Videoconference)
2023 • Enterprise Community
John Calhoun
Two Sides of the DesignOps Coin: Teams Ops and Product Ops
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold

More Videos

Angelos Arnis

"In a landscape focusing on efficiency and profit, we need to help design transition from production to strategic focus."

Angelos Arnis

Navigating the Rapid Shifts in Tech's Turbulent Terrain

October 2, 2023

John Calhoun

"Interviewing for design ops needs a special toolkit that shows how to present your skills and prepare effectively."

John Calhoun Rachel Posman

Bring your DesignOps Story to Life! The Definitive DesignOps Book Jam

October 3, 2023

Alfred Kahn

"If you don’t measure, it’s like a tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear it."

Alfred Kahn

A Seat at the Table: Making Your Team a Strategic Partner

November 29, 2023

Dan Willis

"When you accept differences and adjust, you can learn what you’re capable of."

Dan Willis

Enterprise Storytelling Sessions

June 3, 2019

John Maeda

"If you feel like a doormat trying to earn your place in design, sometimes the best advice is to change jobs."

John Maeda Alison Rand

About Design Organizations (Videoconference)

May 13, 2019

Anat Fintzi

"I learned I had to stop asking questions and start telling them what I was thinking, then say tell me what you think."

Anat Fintzi Rachel Minnicks

Delivering at Scale: Making Traction with Resistant Partners

June 9, 2022

Uday Gajendar

"Creating tangible artifacts forces reaction and debate, helping break enterprise paralysis and drive decisions."

Uday Gajendar

The Wicked Craft of Enterprise UX

May 13, 2015

Kristin Skinner

"There was a need around definition but also understanding the value our teammates would find in this role."

Kristin Skinner

Theme 1 Intro

September 29, 2021

Maish Nichani

"You might feel like one of the blind men in the story when parts of a process don’t show the whole picture. That’s why you need the full journey exposed."

Maish Nichani

Sparking a Service Excellence Mindset at a Government Agency

December 9, 2021