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.

Developing and Deploying Your Design Operations Strategy
Gold
Tuesday, September 24, 2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Share the love for this talk
Developing and Deploying Your Design Operations Strategy
Speakers: Cassandra Piester
Link:

Summary

As Design Operations leaders, we are constantly playing a game of breadth verses depth. It can be easy to get caught diving deep into fire drills or one-off problems, and never having time to scale your efficient operations to the greater team. In this talk, Cassandra will guide you through the process of defining and deploying an operational strategy. With this strategy, you will scale the impact of design operations without increasing the size of your program management team. She'll provide tips on how to get buy in from your key stakeholders to ensure their investment and guarantee their adoption of your strategy as their own. With this practical toolset, you can define your operational vision, empower yourself and your partners to deploy it, and finally get yourself the bandwidth you’ve needed to be more strategic.

Key Insights

  • Design operation strategy acts as both foundation and protective structure for teams to withstand organizational challenges.

  • Multiple design teams often work in silos with inconsistent planning, causing inefficiency and communication gaps.

  • Documenting existing processes and roles is more effective than creating new systems from scratch.

  • Sharing early and 'ugly' drafts encourages stakeholder feedback and faster alignment.

  • Starting with clear roles and responsibilities by analyzing recurring meetings can quickly build common understanding.

  • Collaborative problem framing helps focus strategic efforts on the most impactful issues.

  • A single source of truth roadmap can unify multiple teams and visualize dependencies to improve planning.

  • Introducing quarterly milestone planning bridges the gap between long-term roadmaps and sprint cycles.

  • Scaling design operations requires shifting from tactical execution to strategic facilitation across teams.

  • The process of continuous improvement in operations mirrors iterative product development cycles.

Notable Quotes

"It needs to be a strong structure, not necessarily super pretty, but the foundation your team sits upon and the roof above its head."

"When you set out to build your own design operation strategy, pieces of the puzzle already exist—you don’t have to reinvent the wheel."

"Share early, share ugly—that’s our mantra for this entire process."

"Everyone has thoughts on what their job is, so starting with roles and responsibilities gets quick buy-in."

"If your teams work in silos and have different roadmaps, maybe the solution is a single source of truth to see dependencies and priorities."

"Quarterly milestone planning can help take the big annual rocks and break them down into manageable chunks throughout the year."

"You want to get really deep in the weeds with one team first, then move into a facilitation role to scale across teams."

"Being tactical means updating Kanban tickets for one team; being strategic means updating annual Gantt charts across the portfolio."

"The most important step we often forget is moving on to the next problem."

"Operations have to be constantly improving, just like when we ship features."

Adel Du Toit
Get Your CFO To Say: 'Our Strategic Goal is User Obsession'
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Teresa Swingler
Look, Up in the Sky! UX/UI for Aerospace
2022 • Enterprise Community
Louis Rosenfeld
Becoming a Civic Designer: Making the Move from Private to Public Sector
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Bria Alexander
Theme 1 Intro
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Sean Baker
Weaving Knowledge Management into the Fabric of Our Design Practice
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Conference
Gonzalo Goyanes
Design ROI: Cover a Little, Get a Lot
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Ian Swinson
Designing and Driving UX Careers
2016 • Enterprise UX 2016
Gold
Benjamin Wiedmaier
Redefining Toolkits: Unbundling to Create a Perfect Match
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Sam Yen
Driving Organizational Change Through Design? Do more of this and less of that
2017 • Enterprise Experience 2017
Gold
Phil Hesketh
Designing Accessible Research Workflows
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Jack Moffett
SAFe or Sorry?
2019 • Enterprise Community
Marjorie Stainback
What Research Ops Professionals Have Learned from COVID-19
2020 • Advancing Research Community
Jesse Zolna
Inviting the Whole Org to Come See For Yourself
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Dianne Que
Real Talk: Proving Value through a Scrappy Playbook
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Nathan Curtis
Design Systems for Us: How Many One-Source(s)-of-Truth Are Enough?
2019 • DesignOps Community
Noah Bond
Redefining truth and inclusivity: Navigating data ownership and ethical research in the age of disinformation
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold

More Videos

Yoel Sumitro

"Students cannot be taught what they need to know; they can only be coached to absorb it through demonstration."

Yoel Sumitro

Actions and Reflections: Bridging the Skills Gap among Researchers

March 9, 2022

Zariah Cameron

"Share everything, own nothing but credit everyone."

Zariah Cameron

ReDesigning Wellbeing for Equitable Care in the Workplace

September 23, 2024

Doug Powell

"The iPhone launch was a remarkably compelling, magnetic, and beautiful case study for the power of design."

Doug Powell

DesignOps and the Next Frontier: Leading Through Unpredictable Change

September 11, 2025

Darian Davis

"Creating a roadmap built enough space to make meaningful design changes for developers to implement."

Darian Davis

Lessons from a Toxic Work Relationship

January 8, 2024

Mike Oren

"I helped a company save 12 million dollars by not investing in an iris scanner in a one-week project."

Mike Oren

Why Pharmaceutical's Research Model Should Replace Design Thinking

March 28, 2023

Jacqui Frey

"Design Ops brings the joy back into design."

Jacqui Frey

Scale is Social Work

March 19, 2020

Kim Holt

"We do this with intention of fostering a more inclusive experience for audience members who might be sight impaired."

Kim Holt Emma Wylds Pearl Koppenhaver Maisee Xiong

A Salesforce Panel Discussion on Values-Driven DesignOps

September 8, 2022

Samuel Proulx

"When we design for the edges, we get the middle for free."

Samuel Proulx

From Standards to Innovation: Why Inclusive Design Wins

September 10, 2025

Laine Riley Prokay

"Adding inclusivity to the career ladder took three years and this is still a living document with room for change."

Laine Riley Prokay

How DesignOps can Drive Inclusive Career Ladders for All

September 30, 2021