How DesignOps is Making an Impact for IBM zSystems
Design leaders spend a lot of time focused on improving the experience of users and clients. But who’s working to improve the experience of their design teams? Who serves as the umbrella that shields them from the bureaucracy of a large, complex organization like IBM? Who works to ensure they are engaged, enabled, and effective in their design roles? Enter the practice of Design Operations, or DesignOps.
Three years ago, when I accepted the role of IBM zSystems DesignOps Program Director, few in IBM had heard of DesignOps, which was an emerging practice in the industry. Although I’m not a trained designer, I’ve worked closely with designers for most of my career, and I was excited to help write my own job description and shape the future IBM DesignOps community. Back then I didn’t even know how many zSystems designers there were, much less understand all the financial, legal, procurement, staffing, and other policies and processes that would become the “blue goo” I navigate daily. Today we have an established DesignOps practice in zSystems, including a dedicated ResearchOps lead. I’m proud to say we’re making a positive and measurable impact on the zSystems Design community. Here are a few stories that demonstrate this impact.
Crafting an IBM zSystems Design Community
When I started my new DesignOps role in 2020, one of my first tasks was to collect population data on our designers. How many did we have? Where were they located? What were they working on? Who did they report to? I discovered that 44% of IBM zSystems designers worldwide reported into Shani Sandy, our Z Director of Design, with the rest reporting into various Product Management organizations. The result, based on survey responses, was a fragmented sense of community, communication silos, inconsistent career mentoring, and missed opportunities for sharing and learning across a 100+ designer organization.
IBM zSystems Design leadership soon initiated a centralized partnership approach that consolidated designer reporting while maintaining strong peer-to-peer working partnerships with Product Management and Development. The operations to support this effort sounded so simple. All we needed to do was hire a couple leaders and transfer some designers to different managers. As the DesignOps program manager, I would make sure the transfers happened smoothly behind the scenes. But the more questions I asked, the more I learned about the complex machine that is IBM. The transfer process alone took at least two months of my life and involved HR, in-country and global first-line managers, finance, approvals, cost centers, departments, allocations, three different financial tools, Workday, and coordination with business operations leaders in four countries.
In the end, the effort paid off in two ways. First, I’m happy to share that 88% of zSystems designers now report into our new VP of zSystems Design, Jeff Neely. Much of that progress was made in 2020 and 2021, with at least 70% of zSystems designers becoming part of this centralized partnership model. Second, every hour I spent swimming in “blue goo” was an hour that one of our design leaders didn’t have to spend learning and navigating our internal processes. They could focus their time and energy on communication, engagement and community-building during this important transition, which has resulted in a stronger sense of community for zSystems Design teams.
Streamlining Designer Expenses
In 2021, the IBM zSystems Design organization had about a dozen first- and second- line managers who regularly received designer requests for expenses related to software licenses, training, design award fees, conferences, equipment, etc. To increase efficiency, all requests starting coming to me, as the DesignOps Program Director. These requests were categorized by Finance as “discretionary” expenses, and whether it was for $30 or $3000, each request was required to go through a 6-person approval and review process taking up to 2 weeks. On average, I was processing about 3 of these requests each month. While this saved time for our managers, it was still an inefficient way of doing business.
I created a proposal for a streamlined process, and with the help of Shani, we negotiated with Finance and Business Operations to agree on a solution, which consolidated all designer expense requests into one quarterly request. This resulted in a 9x reduction in time spent processing requests, saving weeks of effort for the IBM zSystems business. At the end of 2022, we further streamlined this process by gaining approval to implement an annual process with quarterly checkpoints. This also increased the autonomy of zSystems Design leadership in making financial decisions for their designers, by essentially giving them their own budget for discretionary expenses.
Increasing Efficiencies for Designer Assignments
Even though we are not consultants, IBM zSystems designers still need to “charge their time” through the financial allocations process. If you’re a team of 100 developers all working on 2–3 products every year, this is a relatively simple process: once a year, managers work with Ops to ensure each person is allocated to a line item associated with their product, and changes are only made during the year when a developer is hired or leaves the team. But if you’re managing a large team of designers, working across dozens of products, with most designers assigned to multiple products at the same time and changing product assignments every few months, this allocations process becomes very complicated and time consuming.
After transitioning the allocations process from the design managers and Ops to me in 2022, we had 101 US designers reporting into our organization. I was responsible for allocating their time across 47 different line items, resulting in 252 separate entries in the US financial tool. In addition, I was responsible for working with Operations to ensure that 48 global designers were accurately allocated in the separate financial tools of 5 different countries. I described the current process to Jeff, on his first day of work, and he agreed to help shepherd my proposal to improve it. The most difficult part would be convincing all the Product Management leaders to provide zSystems Design with more autonomy over designer product assignments.
I’m happy to report that we were successful. Our new 2023 streamlined approach reduces designer allocations to 3 line items, resulting in 113 entries in the financial tool for 98 designers. This has resulted in significant time savings for myself, design leaders, and global business Ops.
So what’s next for zSystems DesignOps? Plenty. DesignOps isn’t just about increasing efficiencies and enabling designers to spend more time designing. It’s also about amplifying impact. This year, I’m working with zSystems Design leaders to double-down on measuring the impact of our Design teams on the business, and then sharing that message far and wide with our executive leadership. We’re working with design teams to define OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) that align to the zSystems business, report those results in a dashboard format, curate stories of impact from those results, and tell those stories in a way that grabs the attention of leaders who are less familiar with design.
It’s an exciting time to be a DesignOps practitioner. These stories are just a few examples of the impact DesignOps can have in improving the experience of designers and design leaders. To begin bringing a DesignOps practice into your organization, ask which processes are getting in the way of your design teams? How might you improve the experience of your designers? What impact could it have on your design organization? Yes, headcount is precious and designers are essential, but I urge you to consider how committing to and building a dedicated DesignOps practice could benefit your design organization.
Kristine Berry is a DesignOps Program Director at IBM based in Research Triangle Park, NC. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
