DesignOps Summit 2021- The DesignOps Starter Kit (Michelle Chin)
Principal DesignOps Manager, Citrix
Background
- Citrix is an enterprise application company, make applications allowing people to work from anywhere securely
Product Design Org
- 64 employees
- Led by a VP of Design
- Broken into 3 main product areas
- Product areas have a set of designers as well as design management to support them
- Researchers allocated to those areas with a head of research to support them
- Program managers led by a head of program management
My current role: DesignOps
- I sit outside those product areas, but I support the team holistically
Previous role: Product Design Manager
Role broken into 3 areas design strategy, people management and DesignOps
- Realistically, a lot of times my DesignOps time would shrink depending on the demands of my job
- A lot of DesignOps managers were experiencing the same thing and struggling to get operational initiatives done
- So, we thought “What if we took everyone’s DesignOps and gave it to one person?”
- We came up with a plan for this new role and got the role of DesignOps approved
The DesignOps Starter Kit
- 5 things that might not be as obvious, but become essential to an up-and-coming DesignOps practice
- Centered around communicating – building that trust and confidence around the design ops practice
1.Decide on decision making responsibilities
- The decisions you make were made by others before
- Organic decision making doesn’t always work for high-stakes efforts
- In some DesignOps initiatives because they’re horizontal, it becomes a little higher stake for the org to change and move in one direction together
- It’s important from the start to collaborate on who’s accountable for making decisions, and who’s involved in feedback
Top Tips
- Be explicit on decision points and feedback points, establish the boundaries early on
- Try a decision framework
- Form some mental models around how decisions could be made with different parties based on cost, resources, time crunch, risk, and impact
- Look for opportunities to alleviate decision fatigue
2. Over communicate – everything
- You’re working in somewhat uncharted territory – people will be just as excited as you!
- People have different mental models of DesignOps
- They might not fully understand what you’re working on or how you’d doing things
- It’s important to communicate what you’re working on and how things are going
- You’re the DesignOps spokesperson – help build that trust and confidence
Top Tips
- Communicate as much as possible and in different formats
- Different formats resonate well with different people
- Things that seem uninteresting to you, might be very interesting to others
- Take the time to go through the details so everyone understands
- Provide opportunities for Q&A
- You can use Miro boards, Slack messages, make time in the meeting agenda for questions, office hours
- Be approachable
- You’re a spokesperson for DesignOps and just letting people know they can come to you with questions because it’s unknown and that you’re there to help them
- Have 1-1s with stakeholders to provide that open line of communication
3. Start small; scale up
- Scaling something across the org can be daunting
- It’s rare to get things right the first time
- Buys you some flexibility
- Flexibility to: mess up, figuring out the answers as you go along, gives you some time to work things out before you scale it to the rest of the organization
Top Tips
- Create pilots where you can
- Pilots can scale and people are more OK with pilots.
- There’s nothing to lose because it’s a pilot
- If you can’t do a pilot, then get as much feedback as you can (users, stakeholders, peers, etc.)
4. Create a backlog
- People will be inspired and want more!
- People will understand DesignOps in their own special way
- “Doesn’t DesignOps include [random task]?”
- “Isn’t [random task] Michelle’s responsibility?”
- A backlog can help you and others pace and define the DesignOps practice
- Help manage expectations
Top Tips
- Create a shareable backlog
- Miro, where any of the managers can see what’s going on
- They can see what stage projects are in, click into a card to read all the details (great for visibility) can see what’s been done, what’s in progress, and gauge the size of the project based on how much is in the card
- Periodically review it
- Little ideas can become a bigger initiative and sometimes those little ideas fold into existing initiatives
- Lookout for yourself – focus on your goals for the year
5. Create templates on the fly
- I spend a lot of time communicating and forging working relationships
- Templates can help streamline your workflow
- Reusable things include diagrams, checklists, org charts, meeting note formats, playbooks, presentations, frameworks, etc.
Top Tips
- Find anything you can reuse; make it reusable for you and others
- Templates do not have to be the tangible things, they can also be frameworks
- Managing Chaos: Digital Governance by Design (Welchman)
Design System Governance
Policies
- Policies from the company, legal, accessibility, etc.
Strategies
- Our 2021 goals, our approach and our standards are Governance processes,
Standards
- Component usage guidelines
- When do you use a button? What are the specs for a button?
Innovation & Planning
Policies
- Policies from the company, SAFe framework
Strategies
- Our approach and why we have a curated innovation and planning phase for the design team
Standards
- Playbook on how to run a good Innovation and Planning Phase
Top Tips (Continued)
- Iterate and evolve, then share templates so others can benefit, too
- Have a collection of assets to quickly jump from
- They don’t have to be masterpieces – scrappy is fine!
Recap on the 5 essential things I think you need when starting a DesignOps practice
The DesignOps Starter Kit
- Decide on decision-making responsibilities
- Over communicate – everything
- Start small; scale up
- Create a backlog
- Create templates on the fly
Most importantly → Celebrate team wins! Confirm that trust and confidence in DesignOps
