The world of information technology over the last few decades has experienced a steep incline in integrating design into digital product and service development of organizations. We’ve slowly realized that design and user-centricity are important and to some extent required for successful business outcomes. In fact, the most thriving tech organizations today are design-driven — much due to well-structured and maintained design management and operations. This month’s Design Breakfast is about Design Management, Operations, and Leadership, and which overlaps there are among these seemingly never-ending buzzwords.
Meet our curator of the month
Petter is a Senior Designer based in Berlin, Germany. Petter loves to work with the challenges that growing design organizations face. He believes that empowering and building capable, strong design teams, communities, and individuals creates an environment for the teams to thrive and makes the projects go forward with the right support. He is also passionate about coaching and mentoring designers in their careers, identifying the right people for the right projects, and creating and centralizing processes and tools.
The term Design Operations has buzzed around for a few years but is now a more established term when discussing design management and design organizations. This free e-book by UXPin introduces what DesignOps is all about, how it affects an organization, how to get started, why it’s important and much more. It also aims at clarifying design leadership/management role definition differences, mainly Design Leader vs. DesignOps Leader and Design Program Manager vs. Design Manager.
Management is nothing new. It’s the “act of working with people and processes to reach organization objectives in the most efficient manner possible”. But is management of design the same as management for any other discipline? This article by the Interaction Design Foundation discusses the complexity of design management and what falls under the term. The definition demonstrates clear overlaps in the definition of DesignOps. What are the differences? Do we need to use both terms interchangeably? It seems like design management and DesignOps could. But Design Leadership, on the other hand, is something different. As Peter Drucker, the world-renowned management consultant says; “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”
This article by Roxanne van Gemert discusses how to manage and scale design operationally by establishing a solid DesignOps environment. It’s about how work is done. As organizations and teams grow, big questions arise, such as “How are we supposed to work together?”, “How do we get feedback and approvals on our work?” and “How does our work create impact at scale?”. This article aims at giving the reader a better understanding of why DesignOps is important to organizations who want to scale their design quality and output. In essence, it’s about removing the unnecessary, administrative and overhead related tasks that designers might be asked to do on the side — or even as a prerequisite — to be able to actually focus on actual design work.
This is one of the best books I’ve read related to increasing design maturity in organizations and building the most capable teams. One particular challenge that this book discusses is design teams built at unprecedented rates and how the investments can be taken more advantage of. Another focus that I appreciate is a focus on the hiring process — essentially finding the right people for an organization.
Coaching and supporting aspiring designers on their career journey is to me personally a very rewarding challenge. It’s also incredibly important that it is done rigorously for a myriad of reasons. This is one of the best practical books I’ve come across within the realm of design leadership and people management. The book is great for designers who want to level up as design managers and leaders. The focus is on scaling design in general, diverse design teams, career building and coaching. It guides design leaders and helps them to dig a path for individual contributors.
By taking small steps and on a daily basis continuously making decisions that pushes me into the larger frame of design work that I’m passionate about. Making sure that people with a mandate and potential of making things happen know about my strengths, wishes and aspirations in terms of career, role and responsibilities.
One thing you would recommend all designers to try out.
Trust and empower both yourself and the people around you. Designers can manage much more than they think. Putting both ourselves and others in uncomfortable, skillfully difficult positions might in the moment seem like a vicious act, but in the long run, this is where we have the biggest possible opportunity to grow and learn.
Biggest learning during your career
By “multiplying”, educating, coaching and mentoring growing designers, the impact curve of one person can continuously, drastically increase. As individual contributors, we only have a limited capacity, but by having an impact through others — who in turn can have an impact through others — we create an opportunity for perpetual indirect impact.
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We’re always happy to hear from people who are eager to learn and grow, and share our values. Welcome home. You will be inspired and supported throughout your journey as our aspiration is to be the Ultimate Learning Platform for your career.