Summary
We’ll identify the big challenges that DesignOps people face—and begin working on addressing them together in this collaborative activity. We’ll work together in small teams to design the ultimate Design Operations organization, capture learnings, and share them with each other. Facilitated by Dave Gray and the XPLANE team.
Key Insights
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Design ops canvases, inspired by business model canvases, effectively facilitate structured conversations without intimidating participants.
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Balancing standardization (e.g., common tools like Skype) with creative freedom is a recurring challenge, as illustrated by Dave's example at GE.
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Culture questions are often underrepresented but vital; teams should proactively add culture-related inquiries during design ops discussions.
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Pairing with unfamiliar colleagues or outside one’s team yields richer insights and exposes blind spots in organizational design ops.
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Large, regulated organizations face complex governance and multiple constraints requiring explicit acknowledgment in design ops.
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Capturing discussions on a shared canvas prevents repetitive meetings by serving as a reference point for evolving conversations.
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Executive sponsorship or ‘executive air cover’ is critical to empower design ops teams and help navigate organizational politics.
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Tools support design ops but cannot replace human relationships; strong interpersonal collaboration is the key lever for success.
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Mapping both current and ideal states helps teams identify gaps and sets a foundation for iterative organizational improvement.
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A flexible canvas with open-ended categories enables participants to surface unanticipated issues important to their contexts.
Notable Quotes
"You don’t have to sit through two hours of gray, it’s just about 15 minutes of setup then you’re released to the wild with an exercise."
"One of the things I’d love you to flag is if you spend more time talking about what a question means than actually answering it, that’s a problem."
"Certain things have to be common across the organization like instant messaging tools, but sometimes that gets in the way of creative freedom."
"If you find yourself having the same conversations over and over, a canvas is a great tool to ratchet that conversation forward and keep it anchored."
"This isn’t about creating a taxonomy; it's really just a tool to help you have a better conversation and make sure you haven’t left something out."
"The tools are a blessing and a curse. They’re not people. The relationships you build are what really matter."
"We’re all in this together, making it up as we go along, but it helps to see that others are wrestling with the same issues."
"The biggest pain point across organizations is how to make meetings more productive and reduce their volume."
"Sometimes you need someone in an executive role to give you air cover, protecting you and giving you authority inside the organization."
"The intent is to iterate on this canvas until it helps people partner better, evangelize design, and scale design ops effectively."
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