Is DesignOps really a new discipline? One could say that operations have always been part of a Design Leader’s responsibility, independent of team size or type of organisation.
Let’s consider:
- How do you integrate design into the organisation?
- What design disciplines do you cover?
- Where in the process are you involved?
- Where do you in-house, and where outsource?
- How do you max out the value of design? How do you drive creative excellence?
- Are you pipeline delivery, or do you transform the organisation?
- How do you scale creative competencies?
- How do you embed new capabilities and technologies?
- How do you attract the best talents and achieve talent retention?
- How do you rethink the way an organisation works achieving empowerment yet high productivity?
- How do you ensure the design intent is getting executed well to market?
DesignOps is often misunderstood as task management, the helping hand or team assistant. If elevated, it is seen as a driver of efficiency through processes, tools, and systems. Both undervalue that DesignOps is a strategic leadership competence which is key to achieving the maximum impact of design for an organisation and can be elevated up to business design and enterprise architecture.
Silke Bochat is a Design Executive & DesignOps Leader with 20+ years of international experience in large, complex organisations such as Colgate, PepsiCo, Mars, Beiersdorf, Vodafone.
