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.

The DesignOps Starter Kit
Gold
Wednesday, September 29, 2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Share the love for this talk
The DesignOps Starter Kit
Speakers: Michelle Chin
Link:

Summary

Starting DesignOps at an org feels exciting and daunting at the same time. People who’ve given you the green light are as excited as you - so there’s a bit of pressure to make this work well! In this talk, Michelle will provide a “starter kit” of 10 tips for beginning a DesignOps program—the 10 foundational things she's learned from establishing DesignOps at her org. Michelle includes how to prepare the program, manage expectations, ensure your success, and keep things sustainable for the long term.

Key Insights

  • Consolidating design ops responsibilities into a single role helps focus and progress operational initiatives more effectively than when spread across design managers.

  • Explicitly defining decision-making responsibilities and feedback loops reduces confusion and decision fatigue in design ops efforts.

  • Communication must be frequent, varied in format, and include opportunities for Q&A to build trust in a new design ops practice.

  • Starting with small pilots allows experimentation and iteration before scaling design ops initiatives organization-wide.

  • Maintaining a transparent, shareable backlog helps manage stakeholder expectations and prioritize design ops projects throughout the year.

  • Creating reusable templates, playbooks, and frameworks streamlines communication and implementation in design ops.

  • Balancing ad hoc urgent requests with strategic goals requires story pointing and capacity management techniques.

  • Design ops scope often includes horizontal, organization-wide initiatives, while design managers handle team-specific ops tasks.

  • Frequent, biweekly one-on-ones with directors and discipline leads maintain alignment and support for design ops.

  • Celebrating team wins reinforces confidence in design ops and eases organizational change fatigue.

Notable Quotes

"Our team was really great and able to make decisions fairly easily, but organic decision making doesn't always work for high stakes efforts."

"Communicate as much as possible and in different formats because different formats resonate well with different people."

"I have become the spokesperson for design ops and it’s my charter to build trust and confidence in the practice."

"Starting with small pilots gives you flexibility to mess up and figure out answers before scaling to the whole org."

"A backlog helps others see what’s in progress, what’s done, and gauge project sizes, plus they can add ideas for consideration."

"Focus on your goals for the year and don’t take on too much or you risk burnout and not delivering what matters."

"Templates don’t have to be masterpieces—they just need to work now and be reusable to save time later."

"Being approachable and having office hours or Q&A sessions makes it easier for people to come with questions and build trust."

"As a tour manager, I was always predicting where things could go wrong and making sure everyone had what they needed; that really helps in design ops."

"Celebrating team wins really helps confirm trust and confidence in design ops, especially when change is hard."

Ask the Rosenbot
Steve Baty
Breaking Out of Ruts: Tips for Overcoming the Fear of Change
2016 • Enterprise UX 2016
Gold
Megan Campos
What Did I Miss? The Hidden Costs of Deprioritizing Diversity in User Research
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Discussion
2017 • Enterprise Experience 2017
Gold
Sam Ladner
How Research Can Drive Strategic Foresight
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Anna Nguyen
Why Our Voice of the Customer is Better Than Yours
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Deanna Smith
Leading Change with Confidence: Strategies for Optimizing Your Process
2024 • DesignOps 2024
Gold
Dan Willis
Enterprise Storytelling Sessions
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Aaron Stienstra
Leveraging Civic Design to Advance Equity and Rebuild Trust in the US Federal Government
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Julie Gitlin
Design as an Agent of Digital Transformation at JPMC
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Kit Unger
Theme 2: Introduction
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Michaela Mora
Advanced Concept Testing Approaches To Guide Product Development and Business Decisions
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Bria Alexander
Theme 1 Intro
2024 • DesignOps 2024
Gold
Alla Weinberg
Design Teams Need Psychological Safety: Here’s How to Create It
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Erin May
Distributed, Democratized, Decentralized: Finding a Research Model to Support Your Org
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Sam Proulx
Accessibility: An Opportunity to Innovate
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Frances Yllana
The Big Question about Impact: A Panel Discussion
2024 • DesignOps 2024
Gold

More Videos

Jemma Ahmed

"Doing democratization properly takes dedicated investment; it can’t just be one bullet on a job description."

Jemma Ahmed Steve Carrod Chris Geison Dr. Shadi Janansefat Christopher Nash

Democratization: Working with it, not against it [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]

July 24, 2024

Nina Jurcic

"Having a design system is not the end goal; it enables radical cost cuts, reduces tech debt, and improves workflows."

Nina Jurcic

The Design System Rollercoaster: From Enabler and Bottleneck to Catalyst for Change

October 3, 2023

Nathan Curtis

"You have to treat the design system as a product that delivers features and releases over increments, never really done."

Nathan Curtis Nalini P. Kotamraju Jack Moffett Dawn Ressel

Discussion

June 9, 2016

Saara Kamppari-Miller

"The word ‘key’ is an extra super duper important differentiator — among all priorities, these are the keys."

Saara Kamppari-Miller Nicole Bergstrom Shashi Jain

Key Metrics: Comparing Three Letter Acronym Metrics That Include the Word “Key”

November 13, 2024

Malini Rao

"The sum of parts is not always the whole — we lost sight of the mental model in our employee record feature."

Malini Rao

Lessons Learned from a 4-year Product Re-platforming Journey

June 9, 2021

Mackenzie Cockram

"Stakeholders often have strong opinions; our job is to back decisions with solid, evidence-based data."

Mackenzie Cockram Sara Branco Cunha Ian Franklin

Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Research from Discovery to Live

December 16, 2022

Bria Alexander

"If you signed up for a cohort, please make sure you’re in your private cohort channel to meet and discuss with your group."

Bria Alexander

Opening Remarks

June 9, 2021

Jackie Ho

"Growth boards enabled direction change sooner by objectively evaluating team health and strategic alignment."

Jackie Ho

Lead Effectively While Preserving Team Autonomy with Growth Boards

January 8, 2024

Dan Hill

"We need to relentlessly ask: technology is the answer, but what is the question?"

Dan Hill

Designing for the infrastructures of everyday life

June 4, 2024