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.

Two Sides of the DesignOps Coin: Teams Ops and Product Ops
Gold
Monday, January 8, 2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Share the love for this talk
Two Sides of the DesignOps Coin: Teams Ops and Product Ops
Speakers: John Calhoun and Rachel Posman
Link:

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. Our solution? Evolve DesignOps into two discrete tracks: Team Ops and Product Ops. We’ll look at how these tracks emerged, how they operate in practice, where they intersect (and where they differ), and the lessons learned from our “conscious uncoupling” of design team ops and product design ops responsibilities.

Key Insights

  • Splitting design ops into 'team ops' and 'product ops' allows focused support at different organizational scales—team ops manages culture and growth, product ops supports delivery and product teams.

  • Recognizing an inflection point where design ops growth lags behind the design organization is critical to avoid solving outdated problems.

  • The pendulum problem occurs when design ops swings priorities wildly between organizational-wide events and product team needs, leading to neglected areas.

  • Assigning ownership for large organizational programs like onboarding ensures consistent quality and reduces stress for DPMs juggling multiple priorities.

  • Siloed DPMs ('lone wolves') arise when responsibilities are too broad or mismatched, harming team morale and efficiency.

  • Creating distinct career ladders aligned with the two design ops tracks encourages specialization, growth, and retention.

  • A horizontal team ops function enables scaling of best practices, playbooks, and cultural connection across a large global UX organization.

  • Product ops acts as an 'air traffic controller' for UX project delivery—synchronizing releases, managing workflows, and facilitating workshops.

  • Continuous learning, community building, and tooling are foundational pillars of the team ops track.

  • Design ops operating models must evolve iteratively, informed by organizational maturity and feedback, with care for human impact.

Notable Quotes

"Imagine your current design ops team is like a coin and every time you flip it, it comes up heads, but it has more than one side worth exploring."

"Team ops goes wide to optimize for the entire UX organization, while product ops goes deep to optimize delivery for individual product teams."

"The pendulum problem is when priorities swing wildly between org-wide events like Dreamforce and product release support, causing some needs to be neglected."

"If nobody owns onboarding, it likely won’t get done or won’t get the energy it deserves."

"DPM loneliness or feeling like an army of one happens when people wear too many hats and become siloed, harming alignment and effectiveness."

"Our career ladder used to look like a step stool—just high enough to see what's interesting but no next step to grow."

"With our new model, partners are more confident funding UX ops because there is clear focus and coverage across priorities."

"Take your time. The road to a new design ops model is long and definitely not a straight path."

"As your design practice matures, your design ops team will reach an inflection point—flip your design ops coin and see what’s on the other side."

"Being critical of your operating model and exploring all ways it can look will push you past that inflection point onto your path forward."

Ask the Rosenbot
Daniel Orbach
Zero to One: Co-Creating Operating Models with your Team
2024 • DesignOps 2024
Gold
Sheryl Cababa
Expanding your Design Lens with Systems Thinking
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Vicky Teinaki
Short Take #3: UX/Product Lessons from Your Industry Peers
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Dave Malouf
The Past, Present, and Future of DesignOps: a 2-part DesignOps Community Call (Part 2) (Videoconference)
2022 • DesignOps Community
Marina Martin
Lives on the Line: The Stakes of UX at the Scale of Government
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold
Scaling Design through Relationship Maps
2017 • DesignOps Summit 2017
Gold
Steve Portigal
Looking Back…to Look Ahead
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Candace Myers
Standardizing Design at Scale
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Sean McKay
Whole Product Thinking: Expanding beyond problem and solution space thinking (Videoconference)
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Prayag Narula
Empowering Designers to do Good Research
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Brigette Metzler
Research Repositories: A global project by the ResearchOps Community (Videoconference)
2020 • Advancing Research Community
Sam Proulx
To Boldly Go: The New Frontiers of Accessibility
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Stretching the Definition of DesignOps with Product Development
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Making People the X-Factor in the Enterprise
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold
Stephanie Wade
Building and Sustaining Design in Government
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Sarah Rink
Remote User Research: Dos and Don'ts from the Virtual Field (Videoconference)
2020 • Advancing Research Community

More Videos

"Organizations don’t always need external training; they can facilitate internal learning and mentorship."

Shaping design, designers and teams

November 8, 2018

Sabrina Mach

"We are not a circus juggling nine balls; we focus on two to avoid cognitive overload and achieve meaningful output."

Sabrina Mach Nina Wainwright

How to Design Your Design Operating Model

September 29, 2021

Samuel Proulx

"Complexity is not a barrier to accessibility – even the most complicated games have been made accessible."

Samuel Proulx

Invisible barriers: Why accessible service design can’t be an afterthought

December 3, 2024

Saara Kamppari-Miller

"Nothing about us without us is the mantra we are embracing when doing our inclusive design operations."

Saara Kamppari-Miller

DesignOps for Inclusive Design and Accessibility (Videoconference)

May 26, 2022

Briana Thomas

"I simply asked the team about their strengths and needs instead of figuring it all out on my own."

Briana Thomas

The Quiet Force: Uncovering Hidden Leadership in High-Impact Design Teams

September 24, 2024

Adam Cutler

"I wish I could tell my 22-year-old self what to stop doing and what to embrace to be a better designer."

Adam Cutler Karen Pascoe Ian Swinson Susan Worthman

Discussion

June 8, 2016

"We had to partner closely with information security to ensure every piece of data in research files was tracked and compliant."

Operationalizing DesignOps

November 7, 2018

Leah Buley

"Value comes not from your deliverables but from orchestrating the team’s talents to get work done faster."

Leah Buley Joe Natoli

Ask Me Anything with Leah Buley and Joe Natoli, co-authors of The User Experience Team of One (2nd edition)

October 8, 2024

Nathan Shedroff

"If your budgets don’t connect to strategy goals, maybe those budget items shouldn’t exist."

Nathan Shedroff

Double Your Mileage: Use Your Research Strategically

March 31, 2020