Themes | DesignOps Summit 2022

Program Themes

This year’s overarching Summit theme, “Creating DesignOps Clarity,” sets the stage for DesignOps stakeholders to come together and re-assess the state of DesignOps; find focus and determine priorities amidst increasingly complex demands; and collectively define roles, determine goals, and put forth best practices that reinforce high-quality, sustainable outcomes.

Theme One

Growing Successful DesignOps Practices and Practitioners

Whether your goal is to become an effective DesignOps practitioner, or to build a DesignOps practice that can scale, you’ll be facing critical decisions every step of the way. Should you focus on strategy or tactics? Does your practice need you to be a visionary leader, a down-and-dirty doer, or a bit of both? And where do you draw the lines between what your practice should and shouldn’t tackle? These sessions from DesignOps peers at such organizations as Salesforce and JP Morgan will help you scope the skills and mindset you’ll need for you, your team, and your org to thrive.

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Theme Two

Scaling Design Organizations

The recent roller-coaster ride of hirings and firings underscores how difficult managing DesignOps can be: one day, you’re trying to attract talented people in the face of intense competition and The Great Resignation. The next day, you’re struggling to maintain morale amid news of layoffs. In between, you’re trying to onboard, train, and retain your people, equip them with the tools and knowledge they need for success, and justify the growing investment in your design organization. We’ll explore how DesignOps people at Adobe, IBM, and Santander are growing their design orgs while navigating uncharted waters.

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Teamwork: Strategies for Effective Collaboration with Other Program Management Teams

Alnie Figueroa

Head of Product and Design Operations, Netflix

Scale Your Organization and Grow Your Designers

Courtney Maya George

Head of Design Data, Amplitude

Design ROI: Cover a Little, Get a Lot

Gonzalo Goyanes

Global DesignOps Manager, Banco Santander

How to Crush the Talent Crunch

Dante Guintu

DesignOps, IBM Sustainability Software

Theme Three

Building an Inclusive DesignOps Practice

The design fields have an immense opportunity to ensure that products and services are designed from the ground up with accessibility and equity in mind. And DesignOps people have a critical responsibility to enable that work. Learn from your peers at such orgs as Loblaw Digital and the government of New South Wales how DesignOps can help develop and support diverse, inclusive design teams that thoughtfully create experiences with everyone in mind.

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DesignOps: A Conduit for Inclusion

Laura Schaefer

Director of Design Operations, Loblaw Digital

ADHD: A DesignOps Superpower

Jessica Norris

Design Enablement Coordinator, Atlassian

Pushing DesignOps’ Influence into New Global Markets

Patrizia Bertini

Head of XD Operations, TrueLayer (UK)

Alexandra Mengoni León

DesignOps Manager, HUGE (LATAM)

Drawing from Feminist Practice to Make Inclusive Design Operational

Mansi Gupta

Founder, Unconform

Theme Four

Visiting the Future of Design Operations

While DesignOps is just getting going in many settings, it’s been thriving long enough in others to have moved well beyond the basics of operational support to helping shape and drive organization-wide strategy for both design and product companies. We’ve selected a handful of amazing projects that represent cutting edge—inspired leadership, impactful management, and tooling wizardry—presented by DesignOps people who are truly “visitors from the future.”

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