This article summarizes two talks on organizational design and design operations (aka “design ops”) by Peter Merholz and Kristin Skinner, authors of Org Design for Design Orgs.

Context

I’m a community manager at Designers Guild where we just completed a pilot run of Facebook’s new Mentorship feature (currently being tested in Groups and Pages). As part of our trial—along with setting up some organizational resources and gathering feedback—I participated in our 8-week, 6-step program as a mentee with a small cohort of other members who applied for the program.

Brad Monahan also moderates Designers Guild and agreed to help out by participating in the program as my mentor. Serendipitously, Brad is also a design manager at Uber and providing direction for designers’ career growth is a core function of his role there. Something that Brad and I began discussing early on is the kind of environment I’d like to work in for the next phase of my design career.

One thing that piqued my interest was the particular way in which Brad described his own job. He doesn’t see moving into management so much as ceasing to design but instead described it as designing different things (teams) to achieve impact in different ways. He unraveled this thread a bit for me and introduced me to a book called Org Design for Design Orgs and the emerging field of design operations (aka design ops). I ended up watching a couple of talks by the authors and annotating them for homework that week.

Org Design Notes from Peter Merholz

Org Design’s General Philosophy

Merholz contends that service design is the best lens to peer through in order to understand the core philosophy underlying org design.

All design is service design.
  • Many customer touch points occur throughout a journey.
  • Design can inform and drive a diverse set of business processes such as management, marketing, engineering, manufacturing, sales, and support.

Organizational Models for Design Teams

Organizational models for design teams can vary quite a bit. Merholz splits these into 3 major categories.

Centralized Internal Services

An in-house agency

  • This model is project-based.
  • Teams are organized by function.
  • Designers are farmed out on projects as needed.
centralized internal services pros and cons
Common pros and cons of the centralized internal services model

Decentralized & Embedded

Everyone gets a designer; pods in squads

  • This model is program-based.
  • Designers are embedded as core team members.
  • It’s common for this model to create teams with 1, 2, or few designer(s).
decentralized and embedded pros and cons
Common pros and cons of the decentralized and embedded model

Centralized Partnership

The best of both worlds

  • Senior designers maintain connections to specialized org teams, while not necessarily embedded (i.e. decentralized and embedded model).
  • This makes sense since designers will possess deeper vertical skillsets later in their careers.
  • Less experienced designers become more modular gears, slotting into project functions as needed (i.e. centralized model).

It’s clear that Merholz favors compromise when it comes to the structure of design organizations. He identifies numerous advantages to hybridity:

  • Designers feel supported in their careers, skill development, and daily workplace needs.
  • Design teams maintain commitment to products and features.
  • Centralization helps maintain a holistic view across the entire customer journey and different segments of the organization.
  • Junior designers have mobility after shorter commitments.
  • Teams are organized by steps in the customer journey which prevents frequent team reorganization.

Org Design Notes from Kristin Skinner

Delivering Great Experiences

To deliver great experiences… I just need to get the _______ right.

  • Design? 🚫 Nope!
  • Strategy? 🚫 Guess again.
  • Organization… ✅ Bingo!
To deliver great experiences… I just need to get the organization right.

Business First

Designers need to show up like business people first, just like any other discipline.

—Bob Schwartz, GM Global Design, GE Healthcare

Lesson #1:
You can’t change the product or service without changing the organization.

The 12 Qualities of Effective Design Orgs

Skinner identifies three categories of useful qualities in design orgs.

Foundation

1. Shared sense of purpose

2. Focused, empowered leadership

3. Authentic user empathy

4. Understand, articulate, and create value

Output

5. Support the entire journey

6. Delivers at all levels of scale

7. Establish and uphold standards of quality

8. Value delivery over perfection

Management

9. Treat team members as people, not resources

10. Diversity of perspective and background

11. Foster a collaborative environment

12. Manage operations effectively

Decision Making

Half the decisions in organizations fail.

—Paul Nutt, Author and Professor, Ohio State University

Fragmented decision making can have an outsized impact.

Here are some study results on the number of viable solutions to business problems generated from different decision-making processes (ranked):

  1. Identifying performance gaps
  2. Goal setting
  3. Problem solving
  4. Leader makes decisions

More inclusive and participatory management styles yield more solutions.

Lesson #2:
Much of what causes designers to stress about their work is the result of flawed operations.

The 5 Stages of Design Org Evolution

Stage 5 design org diagram
A diagram of a Stage 5 design org from Skinner’s Keynote

Stage 1: The Initial Pair

The smallest design organization possible is a team of 2.

Head of Design
  • Traits: creative, managerial, operational
  • A maker at this stage
Product Designer
  • Focuses on structure and surface of design solutions
  • Examples: interaction design, visual design, etc.

Stage 2: Full Team

  • This stage may add more product designers.
  • The team now consists of 5–7 people.
  • Specialized hires are brought on (not limited to the examples below):
Content Strategist

Responsible for voice and tone, content structure, and copywriting

Communication Designer

Owns visual design through multiple channels: online and offline, brand applications, information design, etc.

Stage 3: Design Org

The org now comprises at least 20 people. More examples of additions follow:

Team Lead

A people manager type with domain expertise who’s still practicing

UX Researcher

This is a generative and evaluative role that is ideally highly leveraged throughout the org.

Head of Design (revisited)

At this stage it’s common for HoD’s to struggle with scale and cede the role to directors with more experience.

Stage 4: Coordinated Org

This stage is primarily focused on managing scale-related complexity.

Service Designer

These designers integrate strategy and structure across teams.

Design Lead

This people manager (possibly team lead), is still practicing.

Design Practice/Program Manager

This manager focuses on practice, communication, and prioritization, working towards an overall objective of organizational effectiveness.

Stage 5: Distributed Leadership

This is the final growth taxonomy of design organizations in Skinner’s model.

Design Director

This leader oversees a swath of experiences across teams.

Creative Director

This leader establishes quality standards via creative leadership.

Research Director

This director leads a team pursuing research to create an insights hub.

Creative Technologist

This designer-developer (not a front-end dev) prototypes new experiences.

When to Introduce Design Ops

It’s time to introduce design ops when your org suffers from:

  • poor internal coordination (process, communications, file management)
  • difficulty with cross-functional collaboration within the entire org
  • unsuitable project or program staffing
  • poor visibility into related work streams
  • duplicated efforts across teams
  • non-existent measurement infrastructure
  • fragmented decision-making

Operational Spectrum

“Little o” Operations

Removes sand in the gears by meeting designers’ daily workplace needs like:

  • scheduling and budgets
  • tools and procedures
  • communication and coordination
  • measured by efficacy
“Big O” Operations

The work about the work including:

  • annual planning for adequate headcount
  • market-appropriate compensation packages
  • performance review adjustments to suit designers
  • facilities and IT to support collaboration
  • policy changes to support real customer research
A high-performing design management practice coordinates efforts and knowledge sharing, facilitates prioritization, guides quality and effectiveness, and enables and environment where designers want to grow.

Design Management

These are examples of roles that work toward the above stated goals:

Design Practice Manager
  • partners with design leads to manage design-related business matters
  • connects HoD to stakeholders and other HODs
  • prioritizes efforts for impact
  • allocates personnel suitably
  • ensures effective delivery
Design Program Manager
  • partners with design leads on all of the highest-priority initiatives, programs, platforms
  • flexes between strategy and tactics within the design process
  • ensures program and team health
  • delivers exceptional human-centered products
Design Operations

This team is core group of operations, finance, and relationship experts providing shared services across a design org.

  • Emphasizes health of practice, people, and projects
  • Introduce measurement and reporting for better decision-making

Roles Summary

table summarizing design org roles
Summary of core design and leadership roles discussed in the keynote; unlisted positions are possible

Final Lessons

Lesson #3:
There is no one-size-fits-all for design ops.
Lesson #4:
It takes a relatively small team to have outsize impact.
Lesson #5:
When learning something new, share generously. Don’t fear judgment; judge conservatively.

Designers Guild is a Facebook community comprising designers from 100 countries committed to discussing, learning, and growing together. We just celebrated our 15,000 member milestone by releasing a handful of awesome prizes sponsored by some great design-driven companies. Thanks so much to Sketch, Dropbox, UXPin, Skillshare, Adobe Creative Cloud, Semplice, and Animoodles for their generous contributions to our members. Special thanks to Tanner Christensen and Marissa Louie for organizing the giveaway!

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