Design Operations: Results Summary
Design Ops
Overview
At Kape Technologies, I owned Design Operations for the entire design organization while managing several design teams (Growth, Visual, Product, and Motion) across multiple countries.
This page summarizes results from three Design Ops initiatives:
Fixing Design Intake and Reducing Tool Waste
Building a Design Playbook and QA Process
Leading Design Through Reorganization
Combined Results
Workflow Efficiency
Metric
Brief completeness at intake
Unplanned scope changes
On-time delivery
Time to first review
Brief-to-QA cycle time
Before
42%
-
68%
5.5 days
-
After
87%
-
94%
2.1 days
-
Change
+107%
-64%
+26%
-62%
-57%
Quality and Consistency
Metric
Brand guideline adoption
Visual consistency
On-time delivery
Before
46%
-
18%
After
92%
-
3%
Change
+100%
+49%
-83%
Team Health
Metric
Designer onboarding time
Team role clarity
Manager confidence
Employee satisfaction (eNPS)
Cross-discipline collaboration
Team retention
Before
3.5 weeks
40%
45%
-
-
-
After
1.7 weeks
95%
88%
-
-
100%
Change
-51%
+137%
+96%
+30%
+43%
Throughout tenure
Stakeholder Satisfaction
Metric
Stakeholder satisfaction (intake)
Stakeholder satisfaction (QA)
Before
63%
48%
After
91%
87%
Change
+44%
+81%
Cost Savings
Metric
Annual tooling savings
Adobe spend reduction
Change
$14.5K
20%
How I Measured
Direct data:
Tool costs from invoices and license audits.
Jira reports:
Built custom Jira dashboards tracking time at each status, task handoffs, delays, average work time, QA frequency, and discipline-specific metrics.
Surveys:
Scheduled surveys to design ICs, managers, and stakeholders. Also used data from HR's eNPS surveys.
What I Built
Intake system:
Consolidated brand-specific Jira projects into one unified design project. Created ticket templates, automated triage, and briefing guides.
Design playbook:
Single source of truth with discipline-specific sections for UX, visual, product, motion, and branding. Linked to Figma templates and QA checklists.
QA process:
Parallel content and design tracks with automated task creation. Template-first workflow to fix issues once. Detailed checklists for web builders.
Operating model:
Ownership maps by stream. Weekly syncs. 1:1 mentoring for managers. Documentation in Confluence.
License management:
Audited all subscriptions, removed waste, renegotiated vendor contracts, established monthly reviews.