Brennan Hartich: "Communicating and Establishing DesignOps as a New Function" DesignOps Summit 2018 • November 7-8, 2018 • New York, NY http://www.designopssummit.com

1. Brennan Hartich
Head of Design Operations, Intuit Small Business
Communicating & Establishing
DesignOps as a New Function

2. What have I been up to…
Current: Intuit – Head of Design Operations
Past: Facebook – Design Program Manager
Intuit: Lead – Design Program Management
Mirum/Various Agencies: Producer
A few things about me…
From: Los Angeles
Major: International Business and Vocal/Cello
Performance
Food: Indian, French, and Mexican

3. The Intuit Design Team
500 12
Designers, content designers,
researchers
Design Program Managers

4. Why did we need DesignOps?

5. Going Global
The future of our company was
to operate successfully at a global
level, we needed improved
connections between offices.
Constant Changes
Continuous re-prioritization from
Product Management and
Marketing was causing churn and
duplicate work.
Communication Gaps
Teams were siloed and had no
visibility into work that was in
progress or had launched.
Why did we need a DesignOps team?
The teamwasgettingto a scalethatneeded morethanjust ‘workarounds’tomanageoperations.

6. 3
Time
Spent
Designing
15
hours per day
hours per week
37 percent of time
spent designing
Impact on productivity

7. How did we lay the ground work
to build a DesignOps team?

8. Before you hire your first DesignOps team member…
Roadshow with cross functional leadership
Design Program Management Menu
People, Processes, Priorities Matrix

9. Let’s talk about what DesignOps actually can offer...
How DesignOps partners with designers and design leadership1
Operations
• Headcount Planning
• Roadmap Planning
• Support ResearchTrips
• X-Geo location growth strategy
Project Management
• AirTraffic Control
• Design Sprints
• ProjectTimelines/Scoping
• Daily Standups
Communication Strategy
• Weekly digest of design projects
• OnDemands (agendas, content)
• Manage/create team spaces (wikis)
Onboarding
• Create a new hire program
• Mentorship Programs
• n00b buddies
• Training sessions
Process Design
• Tool Management
• Create collaboration frameworks
• Design System Management
Teambuilding/Culture
• Offsites, workshops, L&D, team
events
• Building a design community
• Therapist/Emotional Support

10. Now, let’s talk about what DesignOps actually does...
How DesignOps partners with cross functional partners2
Relationships
• Conduit to other Design Program Managers, Product
Managers, etc
• Build relationships with cross functional partners
• Act as the initial point of contact for product and
marketing teams
Global Partnerships
• Bridge between headquarters and global offices
• Coordinate X-Geo and X-Segment projects
• X-Geo ‘best practices’ sharing (design
critiques/templates/agendas)

11. People, Process, and Priorities (The Three PPPs)
• Designers’ career growth and
guidance on design quality
• Manage recruiting/hiring for direct
hires
• Staffing - knows each designer’s
skills, career trajectory, etc
• Syncs with other design managers
(talent mobility, design best
practices, etc)
People
Design Manager
• Project/Program Management
• Resourcing for projects
• Events planning (offsites, team
building)
• Onboarding new employees
• Solving design team satisfaction
scores (Pulse)
• Manage X-team documents, tools,
wikis, etc
Process
DesignOps
• Design/Product roadmap
• Headcount planning
• End-to-end product vision across all
competencies
• Drives outside-in, customer centric
thinking
• Vision and exploration to narrowing
down product touch points
Priorities
Design Director

12. Things we all
do together
Resource planning
Priority Planning
People Updates
Work Updates
Leadership Updates

13. Now we had a brand new team.
This is how we did it...

14. Which areas we tackled first…
DesignOps team members began to
create a web of knowledge sharing.
• Weekly DesignOps syncs surfaced
duplicate work from various teams
• Re-evaluate current meetings
• IntroductionAND removal of tools
• Creation of a communication matrix
• Creating a more open dialogue due to
our reporting structure
Bridging Communication
We began to create a model for the
company to work across multiple
geographic locations.
• Incorporate ‘global mindset training’ into
new hire onboarding
• Creation of a global buddy system
• Using the new communication matrix to
respect cultural and time zone
differences
• Having a DesignOps member own global
collaboration
Going Global
There was now a dedicated role that
could collect and organize all design
needs.
• Require briefs from partners in order for
any work to be started
• Implementing ‘maker time’
• Acting as a shield for the design team
• Designers spent less time in meetings, as
Design Leadership could attend instead
Increasing efficiency

15. What didn’t work well
• Allocating a DPM to a Design team that did
not want one
• Allocating a DPM to a design team of 80
• Hiring: one size does not fit all
• Initial confusion around how this role was
different from others
• Trying to standardize too many things for the
larger design team
• Retaining design talent: through Pulse survey
ownership
• Allocating a DPM to a design team of 14
• Having DPMs report to DesignOps, not to
Design Managers
• Having programs that the DesignOps team
could ‘own’ – onboarding, team finances,
headcount tracking
• Word of mouth is the best ‘sales’ tool
What worked well

16. 3
Time
Spent
Designing
15
hours per day
hours per week
37 percent of time
spent designing
Impact on productivity

17. 4
20
hours per day
hours per week
50 percent of time
spent designing
Impact on productivity
Time
Spent
Designing

18. 15 hrs weekly average 20 hrs week average
~13% increase,
DesignOps improves designer productivity

19. 14 Designers
Breakdown into actuals
1 DesignOps
210
+30
hrs/week
280 hrs/week
design hours

20. DesignOps at scale
500 designers at Intuit
+2500 design hours/week

21. So, what’s
next?
DesignOps & PMO
Design Program Manager,
Producer, Operations
Design and Product
Management
Design and research repository

22. Feel free to reach out
after the conference
Connect on LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/brennan-hartich/
Send me an emailwork
brennan_hartich@intuit.com