DesignOps: Unlock the Power of Design by Standardizing Practices and Processes

As companies look to prioritize and expand design in their organizations, it's clear that a level of standardization needs to be met in order to maintain cohesiveness and efficacy across company functions and platforms. A lack of uniformity could negatively impact customer experience and the success of the design function within an organization.

DesignOps can help to resolve several issues that design teams face today. First, the demand for designers to produce high volumes of work at quick speeds is higher than ever. Teams may struggle to deliver quality work at the pace they’re being expected to work at. DesignOps can help design teams produce quality work quickly because it aims to condense day-to-day functions and allows designers to focus on creating enhanced experiences. Creating a style guide for an entire design team to adhere to is just one example of a way to standardize and simplify goals for everyone. Even as complexity within teams increases as the team itself scales, DesignOps practices can alleviate the pressure of adapting to a growing team without design decreasing in quality or value overall.

Another major challenge design teams are dealing with currently is a lack of effective cross-functional collaboration. This can be especially difficult in companies where silos have developed; expanded teams take on their own strategies and practices that differ widely. Eventually things become so complex that these large teams are no longer sharing company-wide goals. For companies that need to work through these silos, building communication and cross-functional collaboration strategies is vital to maintaining cohesiveness both amongst design teams and throughout different departments.

Further, cultivating cross-functional collaboration skills is challenging for design teams since the way companies operate has changed so much over the past two years. In a world where working in hybrid or remote spaces is now the norm, design teams are not usually physically together to determine best practices in real time. So, design team members need to have an understanding of their individual role on the design team and how to collaborate in a more streamlined way with other team members through digital tools and standard goals for all designers to meet to deliver value both internally and externally. Creating this level of cohesiveness across teams will make remote collaboration easier and more successful.

Standardizing the tools, systems, and processes of a design team can take different structures and shapes depending on the size and needs of an organization. Across all organizations, establishing a defined set of digital tools, resources, and processes between teams would be considered strong standardization because these factors can optimize designers' time. Having certain functions streamlined in a consistent way will give design teams more opportunities to innovate and deliver impact to their own organizations and end-users alike. However, while standardizing processes and tools is important, the goal should be for standardization to be a guide to improve functions altogether, not something that stifles designers’ creativity.

A larger organization, by nature of there being more moving parts and people collaborating within and across teams, would benefit from having someone fulfilling a specific DesignOps role. This person would focus on supporting the design team by researching and implementing these universal processes, tools, and communication strategies that would help create cohesiveness across the team. Smaller organizations may not need a designated person in the role, but can adopt DesignOps practices to support design's growth and efficiency as the team continues to grow. Regardless of size, organizations can benefit from implementing standard DesignOps components for best practices as the function continues to grow and evolve.

By standardizing design through a DesignOps lens, time can be spent on improving design maturity and integrating human-centered design into organizations more broadly. This, in turn, will help elevate the value and understanding of design for everyone because there will simply be more time to more effectively educate the greater organization on the impact of design.