Summary
DesignOps as a practice is still relatively new—but the activities have been around long enough that we’re increasingly challenged to justify and quantify what we do. Accordingly, we need to address not just what is DesignOps, but how do we prove its value? What outcomes can we genuinely promise? And how do we know we are successful? In this group exercise, we’ll identify techniques, tactics, and tools for proving (and even measuring) value, and describing the outcomes that matter most.
Key Insights
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62% of surveyed design organizations still don’t know how to measure design ops value effectively.
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Common barriers include limited time, resource constraints, difficulty involving the right stakeholders, and lack of proven value.
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Measuring the value of design is uniquely challenging due to varying organizational constraints and differing maturity stages in design ops.
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Behavioral resistance, such as inconsistent data logging, undermines efforts to capture accurate operational metrics.
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There is no industry standard for measuring design or design ops impact, creating confusion and inconsistency.
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Established frameworks, like Google HEART and Facebook’s mixed methods, provide useful starting points for measurement.
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A proposed eight-type measurement taxonomy was developed collaboratively with community input and analysis by Abby Covert.
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Design ops measurement can be categorized into three focus areas: people, practice, and platform, each contributing to predictable outcomes.
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Sentiment and engagement metrics, along with attrition and retention data, are key indicators for happier, better, and more effective design teams.
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Interactive collaboration and community feedback are essential to creating realistic, adaptable tools for measuring design ops value.
Notable Quotes
"The day I no longer have to convince you felt good, but it’s not good enough."
"We keep trying different things but still don’t quite know how to measure our value."
"Limited time or resources is something every single team struggles with, not just design ops."
"Operationalizing design means creating the space for the team to do their best work within any constraint."
"Every organization has unique constraints, so success must be defined within your context."
"People really hated logging their billable hours, which shows how behavior affects measurement."
"Most companies persist in measuring the wrong thing because they focus only on data, not behavior or sentiment."
"Google HEART framework is useful because it sets goals and maps relevant metrics across teams."
"There are three key themes in design ops: people, practice, and platform — all necessary for predictable outcomes."
"You can’t have effective teams without happy designers and better designers — these outcomes are all interdependent."
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