Along the product design work, I have also starting a Design Ops practice within the org.
When I joined Trainline, I took it upon myself — with the help of the design management — to start a new Ops practice.
The team was becoming a decent size (14 product designer, 4 researchers, 1 UX writer and 4 graphic/brand designers) to justify the starting of the practice. Furthermore, the structure of the teams and the rolling implementation and expansion of our Design System (Depot) made it apparent that it was what the team needed. In the first phase, I set off to undercover pain points and issues within the Product Design team by running a survey first and a kickoff meeting next. The goal was to set a baseline for the status of the team and define priorities — more importantly I wanted to get data that we could compare in 6 months’ time.
After the first survey I ran a kickoff meeting where we reviewed the findings and generated ideas and opportunities to our pain points. I also presented a bit more in depth what ops can do for us and what it is.
After the meeting, we had a clearer roadmap and I set out implementing the first initiative: reducing context switching and improve the quality of design time. We would pilot it for four weeks before running a retro on it and amend it if necessary.
I made sure to share the start of the initiative with the wider team (BA and PO) and set up a feedback survey for them to record their pain points in.