3 Steps for Getting Started with DesignOps

DesignOps — Design Operations, or the orchestration and optimization of people, process, and craft in order to amplify design’s value and impact at scale — aims to establish processes and measures that support scalable solutions for common design-team challenges.

In reality, design-team challenges are vast, so there are many potential focus areas for DesignOps practices. This broad landscape of possible starting points can be overwhelming for teams seeking to invest in DesignOps for the first time. Additionally, while the DesignOps community is certainly growing, most organizations have relatively low DesignOps maturity, and the scarcity of true, formalized DesignOps teams (and their relative infancy, where they do exist), means there are not many proven, time-tested models to study or emulate.

Given these challenges, how does an organization realistically launch a DesignOps practice? How can a team identify the most practical and profitable focus areas for supporting design teams within their organizational context?

This article outlines 3 steps for how to plan and launch practical and manageable DesignOps initiatives. The DesignOps-Planning Workbook available for download at the end of the article contains all resources referenced throughout.

3 Steps for Getting Started with DesignOps

There are 3 high-level steps that organizations can follow in order to identify where to invest in DesignOps and plan initiatives in a manageable and measurable way:

1. Research the problem space: Identify operational painpoints across the design team and design-team partners.
2. Define DesignOps value: Define the meaning and role of DesignOps specific to the organization’s unique set of painpoints.
3. Prioritize and roadmap: Prioritize goals and plan initial tactical activities within a manageable timeline.

Step 1: Research the Problem Space

The first step in building a DesignOps practice is to metaphorically step back. Don’t jump straight into planning and implementing activities. Rather, approach designing a DesignOps practice like you would any other design problem: Spend time identifying and defining the problems first, in order to build a better solution.

Our DesignOps menu (shown below) outlines a comprehensive set of areas that organizations might choose to focus on when planning and implementing processes to support designers; however, it’s impossible for a single person or team to focus on all of these areas at once. (Even a large team with plenty of dedicated team members  would quickly suffer from value dilution if it attempted to cover such a broad scope.) The research phase is meant to identify the biggest painpoints and the areas with the highest potential ROI within this universe of possibilities, so that DesignOps efforts can be focused accordingly.

The most important activity during this step is to gather feedback from the people who lead and participate in design activities (i.e., designers and researchers), as well as the people who are affected or impacted by those activities (i.e., relevant stakeholders and partners).

Launch a Discovery Survey

An internal survey can gather initial clues for identifying operational challenges, the degree of severity of those challenges, and their resulting impact. When launching such a survey, focus on the current state by asking respondents to report on areas such as:

• Overall job satisfaction
• Perceived productivity and workload
• Time spent on various tasks (e.g., core responsibilities vs. operational or administrative tasks)
• Roadblocks
• Critical and noncritical tools, platforms, or resources

The resulting survey data enables benchmarking: Metrics such as employee satisfaction or productivity can be tracked over time as DesignOps activities and efforts are implemented, as a way to measure their impact.

Interview the Design Team and Design-Team Partners

Make use of one-on-one interviews to follow up with survey respondents about roadblocks and operational painpoints. Include both design-team members as well as design-team partners and other stakeholders. (There may be differences in internal and external perceptions.) Our DesignOps framework could be used to develop an interview guide (such as the one below) that will help surface any opportunities across the landscape of elements.

Document the Design Process

The interview can document the current design process, as perceived by both designers and nondesigners. Document design activities and methods used throughout the design process, tools and people involved at each step, and any quantitative metrics (e.g., typical time spent) that might pinpoint areas of waste and value. These metrics can be particularly useful when advocating for the elimination or addition of design activities, meetings, or tools.

Step 2: Define DesignOps Value

The act of researching and synthesizing current challenges facilitates objective conversation around if and how DesignOps can bring value to the organization. If the research phase has indeed highlighted painpoints within the 3 layers of the DesignOps menu — and if it didn’t you probably did the study wrong! — these painpoints can be used to shape future efforts or initiatives.

Focus DesignOps Efforts

First, define the potential areas of opportunity where DesignOps can help. Based on the research, where are the biggest painpoints? Where does the greatest potential lie for return on DesignOps investment? Highlight the primary areas of interest across the DesignOps menu and develop a consolidated and manageable subset of DesignOps focus areas specific to the identified painpoints.

Establish Ownership

In addition to identifying a set of consolidated focus areas, consider who will take ownership of each area. Is it existing team members? Is it an entirely new role? If a new role is to be introduced (e.g., a first-time dedicated DesignOps role), consider how to define and distinguish that role from other existing parallel design roles, and document the differentiation and overlap of responsibilities.

Socialize the Vision

Continue to build buy-in for the newly shaped DesignOps value and any proposed roles or resources required to deliver it. Take the research (e.g., the observed painpoints), the solution (e.g., the consolidated DesignOps focus areas), and the required resources (e.g., new-role descriptions) on a roadshow. Present the vision to stakeholders, solicit feedback, and revise as necessary.

Step 3: Prioritize and Roadmap

As buy-in is achieved and investment for DesignOps efforts approved, avoid the temptation to start launching tactics immediately and indiscriminately. It’s time, yet again, to step back: Identify an initial set of relevant activities that can be achieved within a reasonable timeline and measured over time.

Identify Initial DesignOps Initiatives

In order to create a manageable set of initial initiatives, first identify a strategic goal (e.g., a desired outcome) related to each prioritized painpoint. For example (as illustrated in the worksheet image below), if a painpoint is that very few people within the organization actually understand what the UX team does every day, a strategic goal might be: “Increase understanding of the UX team’s value.”

Next, brainstorm tactical goals (e.g., activities) that support those strategic goals. Tactical goals are specific and measurable. For example, tactical goals that support increasing understanding of the UX team’s value might be:

• Publish a case study of a successful design-led initiative in next month’s company-wide newsletter.
• Establish and promote open office hours from 3 to 4:30pm every Tuesday.
• Increase awareness of design system by 20% (where awareness is benchmarked and tracked via a survey).

Create a DesignOps Roadmap

Finally, create a timeline for launching the established initiatives by mapping tactics into a DesignOps roadmap. A simple roadmapping template is included in this article’s resources and shown below; however, it’s best to use whatever roadmapping tool or software your teams already use so that DesignOps initiatives are closely integrated with other planned activities. A roadmap ensures that those responsible for managing DesignOps activities can deliver value as promised, within a realistic timeline.

Track and Evaluate DesignOps Efforts

No matter the scope of initiatives launched, track the impact of DesignOps efforts with quantifiable metrics. No one metric will tell the full story, so consider a mix of metrics that will measure both the visibility and usefulness of DesignOps efforts, as well as  changes in design quality and design-team’s health. An example mix of metrics across these areas might be:

• Turnover of design-team members: How often do team members seek opportunities elsewhere?
• Team member happiness: What is the employee satisfaction of design-team members compared to that of other teams?
• Engagement :  Are team members excited about the work they’re doing?
• Design quality: Are designs better (e.g., has usability or user satisfaction increased) since DesignOps tools were provided to design-team members?
• Time spent implementing core skill areas:  How much time do designers spend doing design and research vs. administrative work now?
• Adoption of DesignOps tools: How many projects or design teams made use of the templates, tools, and processes implemented by DesignOps?

Ongoing measurement of these factors will help practitioners track and evaluate the impact of DesignOps tactics, pivot as needed, and continue to evolve the practice over time as design-team challenges and needs shift.

Conclusion

DesignOps efforts should be aligned to observable organizational painpoints. Teams who follow the process of researching painpoints, identifying and defining DesignOps value based on those painpoints, and prioritizing and planning DesignOps initiatives accordingly will build a strong, sustainable practice.

To learn even more about implementing a DesignOps practice, come to our full-day course, DesignOps: Scaling UX Design and User Research.