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Every great design system team needs a great product owner. But what makes for a great design system product owner?
First, let’s define product owner. I always turn to Marty Cagan’s resources for all things product ownership and management. Here’s how he defines the role of a product owner:
The product owner is responsible for the backlog: what’s on it and the priority of its items.
How does a product owner determine what goes on a backlog and its priority? Four criteria. Deep knowledge of:
Technology
User Experience Design
Customers
Domain/market
From my experience, one stands out above the rest in relation to design system work: customers. I’ve met many design system product owners who understand tech, design, and their market but fail to really be in the mix with their customers. I’ve seen a strong correlation between this circumstance and design systems that stall out or fail to get traction.
The converse isn’t true. I’ve met many product owners who are less familiar with the ins and outs of technology or design but prioritize their time and attention on customers. These design systems are the ones I see tending to grow and flourish.
I think the most important skill for a design system product owner is making and keeping friends across the organization.
To be more specific—lest you mistake my meaning for “being friendly”—I think the most important skill for a design system product owner is making and keeping connections and alliances across an organization.
There’s a lot of skill that goes into making and sustaining a great design system, and there’s also a good bit of luck too. Most of the luck relates to timing. Start work too soon, and no one needs it and you spent the opportunity cost in the wrong place. Start work too late, and product teams learn that they can’t rely on the design system team for anything timely and/or important.
The job of understanding that sweet spot of timing falls squarely on the design system product owner.
The only way they can understand that timing is to constantly be in the mix of what every customer of the design system team is doing. And, they have to do it without being annoying or constantly caught up. The combination of skills include having the intuition of what is the right place and the right time to join which conversations and prioritizing the ones that the design system team can deliver both fast and at scale. It is truly an art form.
