DESIGN SYSTEM
PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT
Challenge
There was not much product involvement in the Design System before I transferred into product management. A bridge between business goals and design system goals was missing. While a foundation was built and consistent small updates were made to the design system, there was a lack of knowledge to its purpose and power potential to the overall tech org. Long-term goals and epic-level work was lacking, as was influence and engagement with design team and overall product and engineering teams.
Process
In order to evangelize the benefits of a design system to product and engineering counterparts and stakeholders who fund us, we first had to look inward at what our long term goals and value is to the organization. We could not simply rely on the thinking that a design system is simply best practice.
The team needed to shake up the day-day velocity to focus on longer-term goals. I facilitated a 2 Year Goal Stories workshop based on Dan Mall’s strategic planning in order to foster blue sky thinking. With loftier aspirations thought further out, we then started brainstorming how to turn large 2 year goals into manageable chunks - how do we build toward these goals in the next year? What about in the next quarter?
This work also enabled us to have a prominent place on the product roadmap for the first half of the next year. Through roadmap workshops we were able to produce realistic roadmap items for the first half that built toward business goals and a longer-term vision of the Design System.
Along with strategic work, there was also a lack of common cross-functional best practices, which I worked to course correct with a handful of tried and true processes.
