The Emerging Shape of Design Orgs (first in a series of I don't know how many)

Laying an organizational foundation

As a consultant focused on the org design of design orgs, I work across a variety of contexts—established businesses (banks, retail); software as a service (enterprise software); scale-ups (pre-IPO and growing); start-ups. And repeatedly over the past couple of years, I've found myself drawing some variation of the following generic digital product design org chart (click/tap for full size).

Let's look at the various bits.

VP Design. A true executive role, with budgetary and headcount authority, often reporting to an SVP of Product Management (and occasionally to an even more senior executive overseeing all product development, including engineering).