Product Design Manager Workflows
Product Design Managers lead designers who work as strategic partners within Product Design, part of Upstream Studios. This page outlines strategic workflows for enabling designers to think and operate upstream, driving product direction through design excellence and platform-wide thinking.
For operational tasks like team member updates, and administrative processes, see Product Design Operations.
Enabling strategic partnership
As emphasized in Upstream Studios’ vision, strategic partners are upstream, where things begin, where direction gets set. Product Design Managers enable this positioning through how they structure work, coach designers, and collaborate with cross-functional partners.
Key practices:
- Create space for vision work: Ensure designers have time for exploration, experimentation, and strategic thinking, not just execution
- Support design judgment authority: Back designers when they need to say “no” or “not like this” before engineering starts
- Facilitate early involvement: Work with PM leadership to ensure designers are in Interlock planning from the start
- Build designer connections: Strengthen designer-to-designer relationships through Design Studios, cross-stage collaboration, and peer feedback
- Advocate for quality with data: Help designers define success criteria and hold the line on quality
Team Skills Matrix
We conduct an annual team skills analysis based on a process recommended by Nielsen-Norman.
The primary goal of the skills analysis is to inform individual team member’s growth plans. Secondary benefits are that it allows us to see our strengths as a team, helps to identify team trainings that would benefit a large portion of the team, helps us identify strengths we’d like to add when hiring new team members and can also act as a resource for matching mentors and/or design pairs.
How to conduct the team assessment
- Make a copy of the GitLab Team Skills Matrix (private to GitLab).
- Review the template to make sure it makes sense for your team. Do consider changes carefully and discuss with other managers. We want to be able to have consistency so we can view them across multiple design teams.
- Add your team members names to the spreadsheet.
- Introduce this process to your team by sharing this page, the NN article and the GitLab focused template.
- Ask team members to rate themselves (current and future state).
- Review with your team member. You may suggest adjustments based on your observations, but ultimately this is a self-assessment.
- Share the results in an issue -Example Issue.
- To follow up on the results, the team members and their manager can identify opportunities to fill gaps where team members said they want to improve.
- Repeat in Q1 on a yearly cadence.
Career development conversations
Regular 1:1s focused on growth and development are essential for supporting designers’ career progression.
Use these resources:
- Performance factor worksheets - Facilitate talent assessment and growth conversations
- Growth and Development Benefit - Support team member development
- Product Design job families - Understand career progression paths
Working with Product Design leadership
Product Design Managers report to either a Senior Product Design Manager or Director of Product Design.
Collaborate with your manager and leadership team on:
- Strategic UX opportunities and platform-wide initiatives
- Resource allocation and capacity planning
- Design quality and consistency across the organization
- Process improvements that enable strategic work
- Team member career development and growth
Resources
- Product Design landing page - Overview and strategic positioning
- Product Design operations - Administrative tasks and procedures
- Hiring Product Designers - Hiring process and guidelines
- Job family: Product Design Management - Role requirements and responsibilities
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