Closing the gaps: My first 90 days as Head of Design Operations
Zoe Seaman is Head of Design Operations at BT.
In this blog Zoe shares her experiences of stepping into her new role at BT and finding what was working, what wasn’t, and what could be done differently to make things work better.
It’s been three months since I joined Consumer Digital as the Head of Design Operations at BT, a FTSE 100 company with a new Design vision.
The Design Ops team consists of six areas: accessibility, content design ops, Loop (our design system), product design ops, research ops and overall design operations.
For the last few years, its focus has been building the foundations of a design practice, focused on improving our ways of working and removing inefficiencies for design.
Where could I fit in?
Before starting the role, I thought about the value and impact I could bring to both the team and the company.
I reflected on my previous experiences in DesignOps, reading the well-read First 90 days and other people’s perspectives on stepping into a leadership role in an established team (highly recommend Deb Liu’s Make the first 90 days count).
There were big shoes to fill; my predecessor Matt Gottschalk had worked hard to set up the team, putting in place processes and practices to enable the design team to focus on their craft.
DesignOps is a valued discipline across all areas of design at BT, a key player in driving design maturity.
The efforts of Matt and the team had been rewarded with high scores for onboarding (never underestimate the importance of this!) and a suite of design tools to enable the team to operate efficiently and consistently.
What needed to happen next when I stepped into his shoes?
I listened
To find the answer, I listened.
A key part of the first 30 days is understanding what’s happening.
I asked lots of people in the design team and outside of it what was working, what wasn’t, and what could be done differently to make things work better.
An answer that presented itself early on was the opportunity to create a close operations partnership with the other parts of the ‘three-legged stool’.
Like many other companies, BT operates in a design, engineering and product model. The three areas working together to create standout customer experiences with a focus on technical feasibility, user desirability and business viability.
What is different at BT, is the value that’s placed on the operation of those teams.
It isn’t just the design discipline that benefits from teammates dedicated to ensuring designers can focus on their craft and not get side-tracked by operational requirements.
Product operations is earlier in their journey but it is just as valuable and impactful.
It’ll enable product teams to spend more time building world-class experiences and less time working out ‘how’.
The engineering office is the other partner, with a remit similar to DesignOps and ProductOps. This team is in place to find the opportunity areas to ensure a well-run engineering function.
We’re joining forces.
We’re coming together to identify the gaps and tackle the biggest problems.
We’re collectively identifying the highest priorities and how we might solve these collaboratively.
Questions like, what’s the operating model across our teams? What are the core processes across the teams and are they working? What’s getting in the way of teams?
We found like-minded friends
Not only are we partnering as ‘Ops’ teams, we’re also partnering with core functions like HR, Finance, Agile Capability and our Chief Digital Office Business Manager.
These relationships mean we have a fully joined up view to solve problems together and having an even bigger impact.
It doesn’t stop there.
As a business with multiple customer-facing units, there are design, product and engineering teams across the company that we can also partner with and create even more connected thinking and opportunities to bring efficiencies and consistencies to our ways of working.
We can also find spaces where having our own autonomy is the right thing to do and doing it in mindfully around the bigger picture around us.
We’re an open-minded organisation
What I’ve learned so far is how important it is to make the connections early, to be transparent and communicate often on what’s happening.
There’s an openness at BT and a desire to not only find better ways of doing things but take action to do something about them.
I’m looking forward to the journey with my Ops partners and finding out just how far we can go together in meeting our ambition to create innovative solutions for our customers.
