Summary
Your DesignOps journey is a story of ups and downs, lessons learned, and victories won. Join new and veteran DPMs alike in shaping the forthcoming Rosenfeld book, The Design Conductors: Your Essential Guide to Design Operations. Authors Rachel Posman and John Calhoun will guide you through an interactive session to collect the burning questions, inspiring successes, and real-world examples of how DesignOps is practiced in real life by our amazing community, including: Getting into DesignOps The skills and competencies of a DPM DesignOps in the context of your team and organization The tools in your DesignOps toolkit DesignOps case studies you most want to see Join us on this journey and make your mark on the future of DesignOps!
Key Insights
-
•
Design operations practice can be grouped into three key buckets: people, process, and platform.
-
•
Design ops roles involve three core actions: operationalizing, orchestrating, and optimizing workflows and teams.
-
•
Measuring the value of design ops includes both quantitative metrics (delivery dates, business use cases) and qualitative factors (urgency, impact, complexity).
-
•
A significant challenge in design ops is distinguishing the role from design leadership and management to clarify responsibilities and handoffs.
-
•
Competencies in design ops span eight areas including design proficiency, trusted partnerships, program management, leadership, communication, business acumen, and culture.
-
•
Organizational maturity affects how design ops scales; mismatches between design team growth and design ops capacity create challenges.
-
•
In resource-constrained environments, spreadsheets often remain the most effective tool for design ops planning and measurement.
-
•
The design ops community benefits greatly from sharing stories, frameworks, and real-world examples to build a richer, inclusive body of knowledge.
-
•
Design ops often acts as a bridge, driving clarity, confidence, and connections within and across teams and functions.
-
•
Building a design ops team from zero to many requires clear charters, pillars, and operating models that align with organizational needs.
Notable Quotes
"There is not a book currently that is dedicated to design ops. We want this to be the definitive handbook."
"We see design ops as focusing on people, process, and platform — what we act on."
"We operationalize, orchestrate, and optimize as design ops practitioners."
"Measuring the value of design ops is a meaty topic we will dig into deeply."
"Distinguishing design ops from design leadership and management is a big, messy space we want to bring clarity to."
"Often, the best tool for everything in design ops is a spreadsheet."
"How you manage vision in your ops team, especially when it’s new or lacking, is key for ongoing success."
"People want to see competencies for individual contributors versus managers and how those evolve at different career levels."
"Scaling design ops means going from zero to one, or one to many, carefully growing your team charter and operating model."
"We want many voices and perspectives represented in this community and in the book — no contribution is too small."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Louisa Scholar saves us a lot of work by curating the Civic Design library and digital benefits hub."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
November 18, 2022
"Corporations are already largely self-driving often in a bad way, operating on autopilot by policies, which requires human intervention."
Hugh DubberlyProblems with Problems: Reconsidering the Frame of Designing as Problem-Solving
June 19, 2019
"Foresight is a team sport—the more perspectives you have, the better your future scenarios become."
April ReaganLook, Think, Act: The Futures-Smart Design Organization
October 1, 2021
"Startups struggle daily with pricing, and conjoint analysis is the single most underrated tool to find optimal prices."
Ricardo MartinsUnlocking the power of advanced quantitative methods
March 12, 2025
"It’s not about old versus new. It’s about trust and deeply rooted habits."
Maria SkaadenContinuous Design: One eye on the horizon and the other on the next wave
November 8, 2018
"We approached feedback loops like a system equal parts structure and skill. They have to reinforce one another."
Vanessa VarinFeedback: The Other F-Word
September 10, 2025
"If you want to have tattoos, you can have tattoos and show them."
Jen Crim Jess Quittner Saritha Kattekola Alex Karr Gurbani PahwaCulture, DIBS & Recruiting
June 11, 2021
"Journalists like me are in the business of interrogating reality to get at the truth."
Patrick BoehlerFishing for Real Needs: Reimagining Journalism Needs with AI
June 10, 2025
"We created a pop-up design studio in the cafe to trade coffee and cupcakes for employee input."
Julie BaherCulture Change—My Journey
May 14, 2015
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
How can national development agencies strategically manage their innovation portfolios to balance risk and impact?
What changes when learning becomes the North star metric for measuring organizational progress?
What career and life factors influence women’s early exit from tech versus longevity in law?