In recent years, design operations teams — a.k.a. DesignOps — have been embraced by businesses looking to scale their design production. They help grow and evolve design teams by operationalizing workflows and managing projects, budgets and hiring. Most importantly, they help improve the quality of the designs being produced by allowing designers to do what they do best: design.
But how does a company know when they’re ready for a DesignOps team of their own? Superside recently put that question to Dave Malouf, the man who essentially coined the phrase “DesignOps.” A consultant, coach and educator, Malouf is also a speaker and part of the programming committee of the DesignOps Summit. As Malouf put it, the question is less about, “what's the right moment for DesignOps?” It’s “how do you scale it?”
Since 2014, DesignOps — aka design operations — has grown in popularity in the design industry. The buzzword is not simply a trend as DesignOps teams have proven effective in delivering efficient design and allowing businesses to scale in ways that increase profits without burning out in-house designers. Josh Silverman, a DesignOps leader at Twitter until 2018, said, “DesignOps is contextual work that improves aesthetic work, with the ultimate goal of making the business more efficient.”
The role of the DesignOps team is one that used to be filled by project managers. Now often associated with teams of people, the purpose of a DesignOps team is to turn the design function into a high-functioning, highly efficient process.
