Short presentation advising how to obtain organizational buy-in for design systems: avoid selling hypothetical future savings and instead build a small, working design system first (often via 'rogue missions' or under‑the‑radar projects) and then seek approval to scale the proven work. The focus is on gaining approval to scale rather than to create the system.
The way that most people sell design systems is here's what a design system would get us if we had one. And that's like selling vaporware to your stakeholders. Like, if we had a design system, we could save a week of work or two weeks of work, or a million dollars or a hundred that like. And it's all speculative. A much better way to sell your design system is to say, here's what it did do, which means that you have to have a design system and use it before you get approval to have it and use it. I'm a big fan of rogue missions. I'm a big fan of doing work under the radar in a small way, in a way that could scale. What you got to get buy in on is scaling the design system, not creating the design system.
