Continuous experimentation by design

I was fortunate to participate in a panel at the Rosenfeld Design Ops conference last week, where I also co-presented with Pooria on AI and design sprints. The host, Jon Fukuda , did an excellent job of identifying topics and provocations for me, Amy Lee Evans and Ignacio Martinez to discuss. One subject in particular stuck with me: How does Design Ops play a dual role as a steward and driver of innovation?

Context

Design Operations is a need driven by size and complexity. Most design teams aren’t large enough to require one, and non-corporate organizations don’t have the budget. For teams with scaling issues, a Design Operations person is a combination of a steward and someone who drives innovation.

All design teams must be efficient and communicate their value, even though most aren’t at a size that justifies the position. Small teams can have an outsize impact when talent is curated and delivery is orchestrated with purpose. On small teams, the responsibilities of Design Operations typically fall to a combination of Leadership and Management. They will communicate effectively, address procurement, build solutions for tracking time, monitor delivery progress, and create templates that scale.?

Point of View?

A Steward’s job is to serve an organization and advocate for its goals. Innovation is often seen as being done outside of day-to-day feature work. Neither is 100% true when applied to Design Operations. Stewardship is a limited view of what operations can offer, and Innovation is subjective in nature, dependent on context.?

Design Operations provide initial conditions that foster an environment of continuous experimentation to drive outcomes.

Stewardship

A steward supports culture. Someone in this role will provide clarity of purpose, both inward and outward. A Steward reinforces business goals through the process of tracking progress toward outcomes. Understanding capacity levels is critical, regardless of organization size or delivery scope.?

Managers need to deliver as individual and organizational Stewards, serving the needs of the many and the few. Sci-fi tropes aside, stewardship is both micro and macro for Managers. By comparison, Stewardship skews more ‘big picture’ for Design Ops.?

Innovation

Personally, it comes and goes in waves but I feel Innovation-ed out at the moment. ’Innovation’ is applied so broadly and frequently that it can mean almost anything. I have heard executives tell me that ‘they know it when they see it,’ which ensures Innovation remains a moving target for product, development, and design.?

Regardless of its definition, Innovation requires iteration to achieve. Operations has a responsibility to provide initial conditions for individual iteration that results in business value. Otherwise, practitioners will burn out or tune out since they won’t have room to grow.?

Iteration doesn’t take a set amount of time. Tools and methods vary by practitioner, and sometimes we need to make to understand, which can result in what may appear to be over-iteration to non-designers. Design Operations’ job is to understand what resources (time, tools, methods) designers need to iterate, and how much time is acceptable.?

Operations

Ensuring that Design aligns with how Development and the Business operate involves more than project management and semantics. Interoperability of inputs and outputs (data) is key for the success of a design organization. Operations provide clarity by transparently tracking progress toward goals. A high-value contribution from Design Operations is to identify and maintain the sustainable capacity of the Design team down to the practitioner level.

The Overlap

Design Operations plays a vital role by clarifying which tools are approved at the organizational level while advocating for new ones. Design Operations encourages sharing Best Practices and Methods, ensuring that templates are available for use and reuse to drive outcomes cohesively. Everything I just described falls under the heading of Stewardship and Innovation, yet the role of Design Operations extends further.?

Preventing burnout while driving value, providing transparency in utilization, and encouraging team members to innovate is a full-time job. In teams of smaller sizes, the responsibilities of Design Ops belong to Management and Leadership—where Stewardship and Innovation go hand in hand.?