Design Ops Handbook/Chapter 02 of 06
Team Topology & Staffing Models
How the design org is shaped, who reports where, and how many designers you actually need. This chapter argues for one answer: a small central core that owns the system and the craft bar, with designers embedded in the squads that ship.
Section 01
The Three Topologies
Every design org is one of three shapes, or an unacknowledged muddle of two. The shape is not a matter of taste. It follows from how many designers you have and how many independent product surfaces they cover.
Section 02
The Hybrid in Practice
Hybrid fails when nobody writes down the split. Designers sit with their squads day to day and report to design for craft, growth and leveling. The core holds everything that stops being anyone’s job the moment it is everyone’s job.
Section 03
Staffing Ratios
Ratios are a smell test, not a formula. They tell you something is wrong; they do not tell you what good looks like. Every number here assumes the hybrid shape and a design system that already exists. Without one, take a third off every denominator.
Section 04
Routing the Work
Chapter 01 ends with a score. This is what the score turns into. Two questions settle it: does a pattern already exist, and does the work stay inside one squad. Everything else is negotiation.
Section 05
Levels & The Two Tracks
The ladder forks at senior. Both branches carry the same compensation at the first rung past the fork, because the moment management is the only way to earn more, you start losing your best designers to jobs they did not want.
Section 06
Topology Health
Reviewed each quarter alongside headcount planning. Three of these four are about whether the shape is holding. The fourth is about whether anyone believes the ladder.
