A design system is not a static
tool but rather a living organism
that adapts to the changes in your
organisation. Creating a clear
governance strategy is essential to
making sure your design system can
adapt to changes.
A process of creating a governance
strategy starts by answering some
critical questions about how changes
are handled, such as:O Who is responsible for approving
any changes that need to be made
to the design system?
O How are requests for new
components, patterns and styles
handled?
O Who handles bugs in the design
system?In his article, Team Models for
Scaling a Design System (https://
medium.com/eightshapes-llc/team-
models-for-scaling-a-design-system-
2cf9d03be6a0), Nathan Curtis
describes the three common models
of governance:O Solitary model: in this model, an
‘overlord’ (directly responsible
individual or a group of people)
rules the design system (overlord’s
efforts focused primarily on their
own team’s needs).O Centralised model: in this model,
one team is in charge of the system
and guides its evolution.
O Federated mode: in this model,
several people from several teams
are in charge of the system.Each of the models have strengths
and weaknesses but the first is the
most fragile because it has a built-in
risk – when one unit is in charge
of so much, that unit can become
a bottleneck to the completion of
many tasks. As Curtis mentions in his
article, overlords don’t scale. Also, the
project has a high bus factor (https://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor). If
the overlord goes, the company will
have to invest resources in filling
the gap. That’s why many teams are
moving away from the solitary model
to the centralised or federated model- those models are usually better for
scaling the design system.
It’s also possible to combine
models. For instance, the Salesforce
team’s model (https://medium.com/
salesforce-ux/the-salesforce-team-
model-for-scaling-a-design-system-
d89c2a2d404b) combines the
centralised and federated models.
Though Salesforce’s Lightning Design
System has a core team, there
are also contributors who act as a
federation of practitioners.
time in creating a design system risks
producing a lot of waste.
Create a vision statement
A design system is about people – how
they work together to achieve a shared
goal. And people want to know the
answers to the following questions:
O Where are we going?
O What do we want to achieve?
O Why do we want to achieve that?
Those are fundamental questions that
you need to answer in order to build a
shared vision. A shared vision will be
a foundation for a design system that
will give teams a guided way to build
solutions for their product problems.
A vision statement defines what your
team, product or company is attempting
to achieve and, more importantly, why. It
aligns teams around a clear set of shared
goals and becomes a North Star for the
entire organisation – it unites people
involved in product development and
guides them to a common destination.
If you’re looking for a simple way
to create a vision statement, consider
describing what your product or
organisation should look like in five
years. By doing that, you’ll define a
target condition and it will be much
easier to create a strategy that will help
you to achieve it.
Establish guiding design
principles
How do you define good design? How
do you know when something is ready
for implementation? When it comes
to evaluating the quality of a design,
designers often rely on their own set
of standards. But following such an
approach can introduce a lot of chaos
in the product design process because
every designer will have their subjective
ideas. That’s where design principles can
save the day.
Solid design principles are the
foundation of any functioning system.
They should capture the essence of what
good design means for the company and
provide practical recommendations
for product teams on how to achieve
In the solitary model, one team makes a
system availableIn the centralised model, a central design team
produces and supports a system used by othersIn the federated model, designers from multiple
product teams work on the system togetherSalesforce uses a hybrid of two modelsBuild a perfect design system