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The Design Conductors

Your Essential Guide to Design Operations

By Rachel Posman & John Calhoun

Published: October 2024
Paperback: 344 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-959029-23-6
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-959029-61-8

Your favorite apps and programs share one thing in common: they are all thoughtfully designed. Design Operations is the business practice that ensures great design and great designers thrive and deliver meaningful impact. The Design Conductors is your comprehensive guide to DesignOps. You’ll learn how to successfully advocate for, build out, scale up, and ultimately operate design organizations.

Who Should Read This Book

Although this book is definitely for designers, it’s also an essential field guide for product and project managers of all types. Anyone who works in the intersection of process and change management, such as healthcare, tech, or financial services, can learn the design methodologies used by DesignOps practitioners. People who work hand-in-hand with designers, particularly those in the field of software, hardware, or creative design, will also find this book useful. Finally, leaders in design, product, business, and engineering should read this book to learn how to create their own DesignOps culture where teams who build great user experiences can thrive.

Takeaways

  • Learn what DesignOps is and where it began.
  • Explore the most common backgrounds for people who want to become DesignOps practitioners.
  • Define the eight career competencies that all DesignOps practitioners share.
  • Discover how to build a DesignOps practice with a handy framework created by one of the authors.
  • Highlight the different kinds of paths that DesignOps professionals can take in their careers (with real-world examples).
  • Operationalize values by leading to effect transformative changes in teams and businesses.
  • Show how the four most common DesignOps org models influence the ways in which teams can function and be organized.
  • Uncover how different opportunities and areas of ownership are influenced by a network of related roles.
  • Learn the practical application of building, running, and growing a DesignOps team—one that is already in existence or one that is built from scratch.
  • Follow the comprehensive toolkit for anyone seeking to join a DesignOps team–from the interview process through a set of guidelines for hiring managers to conduct interviews of prospective talent.

Your favorite apps and programs share one thing in common: they are all thoughtfully designed. Design Operations is the business practice that ensures great design and great designers thrive and deliver meaningful impact. The Design Conductors is your comprehensive guide to DesignOps. You’ll learn how to successfully advocate for, build out, scale up, and ultimately operate design organizations.

Who Should Read This Book

Although this book is definitely for designers, it’s also an essential field guide for product and project managers of all types. Anyone who works in the intersection of process and change management, such as healthcare, tech, or financial services, can learn the design methodologies used by DesignOps practitioners. People who work hand-in-hand with designers, particularly those in the field of software, hardware, or creative design, will also find this book useful. Finally, leaders in design, product, business, and engineering should read this book to learn how to create their own DesignOps culture where teams who build great user experiences can thrive.

Takeaways

  • Learn what DesignOps is and where it began.
  • Explore the most common backgrounds for people who want to become DesignOps practitioners.
  • Define the eight career competencies that all DesignOps practitioners share.
  • Discover how to build a DesignOps practice with a handy framework created by one of the authors.
  • Highlight the different kinds of paths that DesignOps professionals can take in their careers (with real-world examples).
  • Operationalize values by leading to effect transformative changes in teams and businesses.
  • Show how the four most common DesignOps org models influence the ways in which teams can function and be organized.
  • Uncover how different opportunities and areas of ownership are influenced by a network of related roles.
  • Learn the practical application of building, running, and growing a DesignOps team—one that is already in existence or one that is built from scratch.
  • Follow the comprehensive toolkit for anyone seeking to join a DesignOps team–from the interview process through a set of guidelines for hiring managers to conduct interviews of prospective talent.

Testimonials

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The First Note
Chapter 2: Learning the Score
Chapter 3: Drawn to the Stage
Chapter 4: It’s All About Practice
Chapter 5: Composing Your Career
Chapter 6: Your DesignOps Crescendo
Chapter 7: Playing Your Part
Chapter 8: Shaped by the Orchestra
Chapter 9: Your Performance Partners
Chapter 10: From Soloist to Symphony
Chapter 11: Ready to Take Up the Baton
Chapter 12: Maintaining Your Rhythm
Chapter 13: The Wrong Notes
Chapter 14: Tuning Your Instruments
Chapter 15: Measure by Measure
Chapter 16: A Symphony of Talent
Chapter 17: Epilogue
Chapter 18: Encore

Frequently Asked Questions

These common questions and their short answers are taken from Rachel Postman and John Calhoun’s book The Design Conductors: Your Essential Guide to Design Operations. You can find longer answers to each in your copy of the book, either printed or digital version.

    1. What is the most important lesson in this book?
      The lesson is easy to summarize but complicated to explain. Hence, we wrote this book to help readers of all backgrounds understand that “DesignOps is design.”
    2. What’s the difference between Design Operations and design program management?
      We generally use the term Design Operations (commonly shortened to DesignOps) as the highest-order label to refer to this practice. The name is inclusive of many aspects of design, such as user experience
      design, content design, and research; we acknowledge variations and subtleties in this label in Chapter 1, “The First Note.” Our position is that the work of design program management is just one component
      of DesignOps. That said, the role and title of design program manager (commonly shortened to DPM) is the best descriptor of someone who practices Design Operations, regardless of their skill, level, or day-to-day job responsibilities.

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