Summary
Building a Design Ops team means having a long-term vision and thinking about future growth from the very beginning. DesignOps team members can become key problem solvers bringing value to your company—or can hit professional dead end without leveraging their true strengths. As a new discipline, how you plan to build strong culture and meaningful growth paths will provide ongoing value to your company. Courtney Kaplan will talk about how you can define opportunities for your team, find the right challenges for talent, and provide support in creating an impactful discipline.
Key Insights
-
•
Design program management grew from a 2-person team to over 300 in Facebook's ads design group in five years.
-
•
Building design ops requires moving through four phases: triaging, discovering, emerging, and strategizing.
-
•
Initial hiring should focus on clear prioritization and a vision to attract long-term, motivated talent.
-
•
Early DPMs often become overwhelmed by requests; managers must protect their focus and support growth.
-
•
It's crucial to understand DPMs' unique passions and strengths, not just their skills, for sustainable growth.
-
•
Without thoughtful growth, DPMs risk becoming overwhelmed coordinators or burnt-out super producers.
-
•
Creating community and mentorship among DPMs reduces the loneliness of being the sole ops person on a team.
-
•
As DPMs mature, they identify complex organizational problems and develop scalable solutions like onboarding camps.
-
•
Successful design ops teams share best practices broadly and build cross-functional partnerships beyond design.
-
•
Strategic design ops partners influence company success by proactively shaping plans alongside leadership.
Notable Quotes
"I was much more interested in talking to clients, understanding the scope, and translating that into what designers would build."
"We grew from two designers to 50 in four months, then over 300 in five years in just the ads design org."
"Start with making a big list of all the things breaking within design and bucket them to prioritize."
"Those first hires establish the tone of the entire design ops discipline moving forward."
"DPMs can get overwhelmed quickly because they want to say yes to everything; managers must help say no."
"Helping your team take risks and stretch is critical even though design ops tend to be risk averse by nature."
"My team felt lonely—like lone wolves being the only one of their kind on their teams."
"No one else knows what you know as a DPM. You have to coach and help them frame up problems."
"We created onboarding camps that helped new hires become impactful faster and packaged that across teams."
"The ultimate place for a design ops team is to be strategic partners driving company success."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Plans tend to be worthless but the planning process is incredibly invaluable."
Giff ConstableFinancial fluency for product leaders: AMA with Giff Constable
April 11, 2024
"We are designing how the assistant is trying to reason, moving from scripting responses to orchestrating the AI's cognitive process."
Kritika YadavOptimizing AI Conversations: A Case Study on Personalized Shopping Assistance Frameworks
June 10, 2025
"Trust is created between two people. Safety is created in a group of people."
Alla WeinbergHow to Build and Scale Team Safety
January 8, 2024
"Systemic deceptive design is harder to regulate because manipulation happens across time and user context."
Harry Brignull Mark Leiser Robert StribleyBeyond Clicks and Tricks: Why deceptive design has grown into a regulatory faultline
January 16, 2026
"Subpar experiences make it out into the world due to these pressures."
Kit UngerTheme 2: Introduction
June 10, 2021
"You cannot brute force your way into engagement; it just doesn’t happen."
Sofia QuinteroBeyond Tools: The Messy Business of Implementing Research Repositories
March 10, 2022
"You want to move from ‘make me a thing’ to ‘change customer behavior.’ That’s where the magic is."
Jeff GothelfThe Intersection of Lean and Design
January 10, 2019
"Her energy and enthusiasm is contagious and she inspires everyone on the team to expand our horizons and go further."
Kit Unger Lada GorlenkoTheme 3 Intro
June 10, 2022
"People who took notes by hand tend to have better recall than those typing notes because they process information differently."
Jorge ArangoThe Best of Both Worlds: How to Integrate Paper and Digital Notes (1st of 3 seminars)
April 5, 2024
