The UX/Design Organizational Health Report revealed many factors that affect how healthy a UX/Design team is. I have long thought that whether UX/Design reports through Product Management, Engineering, I.T., or Digital wasn't that salient relative to other factors (e.g., organization size, industry, etc.)
It turns out, though, that a study addressing organizational health finds that organizational structure actually does matter. Because one of the cleanest and clearest findings connected reporting structure to organizational health. Consistently, the least healthy orgs reported up through Marketing (admittedly a small sample of 25 respondents) and Engineering. And the healthiest orgs reported either directly to the CEO/GM or through Digital.
To illustrate this, I worked with Claude.ai to shape a chart that shows the scores for each of these departments. The chart starts with Engineering and Marketing on the left, because they are nearly uniformly underperforming to average. Then Product and I.T. in the middle, as they prove, well, middling. And then Digital and CEO/GM at the end, because they consistently overperform. Review it below!
