027 - What Is Design Operations? with Philip Rowe

Time Limit

“Design Operations is tactical, it’s strategic design thinking, it's project management, but it's really this lens on combining business and design thinking to one role.”

A new role has been emerging in the tech and product space, and it’s one that looks a whole lot like project or program management but focuses on design. It’s called Design Operations, and it’s picking up a lot of steam, so you may have seen it rolled out in your organization or others. We wanted to dig in on the topic to explore what is design operations, what does someone in design operations do, and how does design operation help projects and teams?

That’s a lot of questions! Thankfully, Philip Rowe, a UX Program Manager at Google, joined us on the show to explain it all. With a experience working as a project manager and a UX designer, Philip is perfectly positioned to discuss the topic. He and Brett cover a lot of ground in the interview, including:

• What is design operations?
• How design operations works at Google
• How teams interact with design operations folks
• The skills needed to take on a design operations role
• Design Thinking and other design-focused processes
• Cultivating a healthy team culture
• OKRs and how they’re used at Google

Resources mention in the interview:

• Design Operations: Scaling Design Teams & Amplifying Impact, Philip’s presentation at the Digital PM Summit 2019
• What Great Listeners Actually Do
• The Power of a Positive No: How to Say No and Still Get to Yes by William Ury
• Guide: Set Goals with OKRs by Google

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