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
"We can damage relationships or apply tactics appropriate for protest environments when co-creation was necessary."
Sha HwangThe First Fifty Years of Civic Design
November 16, 2022
"Being badass means being vulnerable, standing up, being brave, and being true to yourself."
Megan KiersteadYou Are a Badass at UX: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome
March 10, 2021
"Compliance is not enough; we need to go beyond minimum legal requirements for true accessibility."
Megan Clegg Michael Haggerty-Villa Alexis MorinSpace for Everyone: Reframing Accessibility Through a Wider Lens
June 10, 2021
"Pilot onboarding includes extensive checklists that are only now being digitized from paper."
Teresa SwinglerLook, Up in the Sky! UX/UI for Aerospace
October 27, 2022
"Design ops is far more than measuring and optimizing processes and tools."
Jon FukudaTheme One Intro
September 8, 2022
"Language is very important; sometimes new vocabulary helps because people didn’t have a word before."
John Mortimer Milan Guenther Lucy Ellis Patrick QuattlebaumPanel Discussion
December 3, 2024
"We’re lucky if we solve a single thing; everything else has to be parking lot."
Jon Fukuda Amy Evans Ignacio Martinez Joe MeersmanThe Big Question about Innovation: A Panel Discussion
September 25, 2024
"Our theme today is design practices in times of crisis."
Kit UngerTheme 1 Intro
June 8, 2022
"You’re not one of them. And that is your strength, Renee. That is your power."
Renee ReidBecoming a ResearchH.E.R (Highly Enterprise Ready)
June 3, 2019
