Scale and quantify the DesignOps — The DesignOps value streams
Some say that Design is a craft, some art, and some consider design just as an everyday work that has to be done 🤷♂️. There are many faces and opinions as well about What Design is.
Therefore, I believe we all are artists in what we do, every phase or moment, no matter what we do. Our craft skills grow as we gain experience from various projects. Some recognize their growth subjectively, aka “it looks better or more professional,” some look for others' opinions, some define goals to track their progress, and some combine it.
As I covered this in previous articles. DesignOps is here to empower the growth of skills and overall design maturity — how the design is understood, perceived, and executed.
As with any activity, we automatize and improve routines to fully engage in the creation process. We typically define goals, create guides, tools, processes, and frameworks that serve us for more than just “better execution”. These help us to grow, align, co-op, or set expectations.
Being Operational is a good start, and you can create immediate value. Once scaling and things become more complex, it is crucial to start being Tactical and Strategic than just Operational. We need objectivity and guidance to create an environment we can scale and stay focused.
Measuring DesignOps impact
Metrics, metrics, metrics! I have heard and been in many discussions where business owners argued about design's value and, typically, the business impact. In many projects, I saw the typical case of using mainly ROI as a key metric to value and justify almost anything. Before we dive deeper, let me remind you one thing:
Design is often harder to quantify and measure due to its complexity. Anything along the way can affect the end result, making it harder to claim success and be accused of failure of design.
That applies to DesignOps as well. DesignOps initiatives and projects are typically more long-term than short-term and not only operational-based. As a result, DesignOps impacts in a wider aspects than just ROI:
- How we work together,
- What impact we create,
- How the design and its practices is perceived in and out of the organization,
- Continually empower growth, evolution, and overall maturity.
That means, when considering metrics, they probably shouldn’t change from project to project (or at least the critical ones), as it will be hard to identify the big picture or answer questions like:
How we progress?Metrics as indicators
I think of metrics as indicators to quantify How we progress in a particular context. Going back to ROI, this metric is and will be valuable when you need to think about your budget utilization — the impact of design on business. This can be handy in situations like tool replacement, where ROI or finance investment can influence your choice, providing another angle for the decision. But it should not be the only one.
You often have more indicators to understand the current state to make effective, informed, decisions. A mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches, such as comparisons, scorings, behavioral, attitudinal, or financial metrics grouped by interest, can indicate how you progress in certain aspects — the Value streams of DesignOps.
Let's look at the state of your (design) organization from the Talent angle as an example:
- A Growth Rate can represent the actual and intended future state.
- This indicator can be built on the number of New Hires, Promotions, Role Changes, or Leaves (Attrition Rate).
- Or you can oversee the Employee Lifecycle (ELM) of all talents or zoom it to an individual’s performance.
Once you have defined the clear long-term objective, looking at it from different angles, the Value Streams, help you define the clear and contextual-based indicators. Here we used the Grow a mature design environment and looked at that from Talent, Culture, or Flow angle.
💡Measuring DesignOps with the REACH Metrics Framework
Looking for help or some framework to define your indicators? You can combine the DesignOps Value Streams concept with the REACH ((Results, Efficiency, Ability, Clarity, Health)) framework.
Scaling Design(Ops) with value streams
The concept of Value Streams may sound robust and suitable for big companies with dozens or tons of talents. Yet, rather than formalizing a structure, it is more about mindset. A philosophy that can be applied as you grow and scale with you — from individuals as an additional part of their job to a fully dedicated team.
In general, scaling is an essential challenge to any leader — often called the Problem of More and Better with less. The Value Streams in DesignOps help better control and foster scaling by being flexible to your organization's situation, resources, needs, and plans.
Although Talent, Flow, Culture, and Impact, are essential Value Streams, you can find a need to establish additional ones. You may struggle to innovate because business-as-usual comes first, and the internal environment needs dedicated movement to innovate. It can make sense to establish new streams, such as the Innovation stream, and build around that initiative(s) and team(s). The other streams can support, communicate and manage expectations among the organization — nobody wants to feel as does not innovate, right?
The exact structure and roles will vary per organization and needs. The DesignOps Value Stream concept helps you better identify the purpose and describe the job, and with career framework shape requirements — skills and experience the person needs to succeed in the role.
If you start with DesignOps, maybe the Design Managers or Design Leads do all sorts of “Ops” initiatives. As the team grows, new needs and challenges occur; you probably add more roles to satisfy demand. With a large team, you can end up in larger structures that also need formalized coordination.
Going from small to large will not happen overnight. It can take up to 2 years before you have your first hire dedicated just to DesignOps. Even though it is frankly quite common that there is no, little, or shared budget for DesignOps. Quite a paradox that many want to deliver products with spectacular experience, yet in reality, not invest in design and people who put their hands on that.
Yet, with the right mindset and passion, you can start small just today without any necessities. If you persist, it pays off in many ways later 😎
Wrap-up
Design is cross-functional and collaborative. That even more counts about DesignOps. To solve problems and manage changes, you need, among other things, strong and accountable partnerships at different levels. It is more challenging for one to maintain all the partnerships without losing quality, attention, or focus. The more you are disconnected, the more you can get into a loop of making just short-term outputs or worse — growing an environment with the following frustrations.
The idea of Value Streams was born not only to address all these. These small units, micro-services, are intended to generate outcomes providing value at different levels and angles, reflecting the situation and plans of the organization. Moreover, the Value Streams concept is designed to fulfill and scale DesignOp’s ultimate mission — to Grow a mature design environment. It is just more than an alternative translation of the classic approach of People, Practice, Governance, Tools or Platform.
Design can be more than a value addition to specific initiatives. It is an indispensable part of the company. Making DesignOps a key partner for ICs and Leadership on an Operational, Tactical, and Strategic level is an investment that can empower growth, changes, and innovation within the organization or the entire company. As there are many overlaps between DesignOps and other roles, it is essential to build vital partnerships. That can be with individuals (Engineers, Content Writers, Project managers, etc.), leaders, or other “Ops” folks such as PeopleOps, ProductOps, and TechOps.
After all, we all strive for the same, yet from different angles and with different motivations to fulfill our company’s vision & mission 😎.
Zdenek (@zdenek.zenger) is a design enthusiast who shares his experience & thoughts about Design Leadership, DesignOps and Product Design. This article and the opinions are personal. It does not necessarily represent any positions, strategies, or opinions of any business subjects.
Special thanks
This idea was not born overnight. Kate Kaplan, Peter Merholz, Dave Malouf, Patrizia Bertiny, Peter Boersma, Angelos Arnis, Arturo Leal, Jan Šrůtek, Peter Rod, Michal Nosek, Georgiy Chernyavsky and Veronika Gréková were a great inspiration to me 👏.
Additional thanks come to events and groups like DesignOps Summit By Rosenfeld, DesignOps from Friends of Figma, DesignOps Assembly, or the UX Camp Europe. Without these, I would have less to think about 🙂
Thanks for all the inspiration that helped me think through, connect, try and revise this concept. You rock ❤️
