Problem

Our primary goal as DesignOps professionals is to continually improve the operational efficiency of the design organization. After we had been measuring team happiness for multiple cycles successfully and we saw a big opportunity to expand the methodology to all aspects of running an effective organization. The need to quantify our ability to deliver meaningful UX corresponds well with the ever increasing need for designers to leverage data to inform their decision making. This need does not only apply to customer facing products but also to the way we run our own operations. Efficiency and effectiveness, especially in times of cost saving and ambitious profitability targets, is essential for the survival of any organization. We also saw the need to validate our assumptions when making bigger decisions around the design of the organization. What are we truly optimizing for and do we have a way of quantifying the impact of our interventions?

Actions and Interventions

In order to identify the right data points we started with an open discovery - capturing all aspects of what it means to run an effective team, through a series of workshops, focus group discussions, in person interviews and industry data. We were able to condense this wealth of data into four focus areas, using affinity mapping. These areas correspond well with industry standards and allow us to specify signals that we can convert into metrics. 

Maturity

This focus area is often also called Partnerships or Strategy and essentially looks at the extent in which an organisation is customer centric. How much access do designers have to the problem space and how much customer centricity is influencing our decisions and ultimately our roadmap? 

Process and Practice

This focus area is all about elevating the craft of design and operationalizing behaviour that leads to positive outcomes. Looking at the ways in which we work and deliver value to customers

People

People operations is a critical corner stone when running an effective team. From staffing and headcount planning, over recruiting, interviewing and onboarding, to ultimately up-skilling designers and giving them the right opportunities to grow and to meet their career goals. The bigger the team the more crucial this is. Having strong answers to the question of whether or not you can meet your career goals no longer only affects your productivity and engagement - it will affect the retention of all critical talent. 

Culture

Finding work purpose-, and meaningful, having a diverse team and working in a safe environment build the foundation for designers to do their best work. Building culture is difficult but incredibly important for a high functioning organization. 

Based on these focus areas we were able to establish specific key drivers. For maturity this includes customer centric OKRs, ability to quantify impact, roadmap visibility and many more. For Process and Practice we look at various aspects of collaboration, project and process management, tooling and feedback loops. For People we look at growth opportunities, manager support, LnD effectiveness and the quality of our career framework. For Culture we look at psychology safety, resilience, engagement, work-life-balance and evangelism. In total we measure 36 key drivers that cumulatively define KPIs for our team. 

We do this by measuring agreement to specific statements using a 5 point Likert-scale in a bi-annual survey. Additionally we add open ended questions for each key driver allowing us to dig deeper into the “why” when the scores are low.  

Outcome and Impact

Each semester we publish and share these reports with the team and leadership. We do that by creating combined reports for the entire organisation [Link] as well as individual reports for a team or even stream level [Link]. The combination of qualitative and quantitative data allows managers to take specific actions and interventions. We learned that issues in teams are often unique and local problems need local solutions. We support this by running check-ins and workshops with the individual teams and encourage managers to set focus areas for themselves as well as delegate specific key drivers to their team members. This allows the team members to take ownership of specific problem areas and also claim and quantify the impact they have improving operations for their performance evaluation. This has proven to be a powerful lever for individuals who otherwise have no way of quantifying the work that is not directly related to customer impact metrics. 

We also leverage insights with the organisational leadership to quantify if bigger decisions about the org structure actually had the desired effect or not. It provides broad visibility into all aspects of running an effective design organization. 

Insights

The power of data informed decision making

Leveraging data not only for prioritizing features but also to quantify and meaningful act on internal processes has become a cornerstone of running the teams operations. 

Consistency in Data Collection

Showing progress over time and larger data trends is incredibly meaningful as our ability to analyze and act on insights is significantly heightened. 

Empowering managers and individuals

The ability to collect quantifiable feedback for managers allows them to continually improve their approach to leadership, while individuals are empowered to take ownership of critical problem areas.