Building DesignOps Infrastructure from Scratch
When I joined Quanta Credit Services as Creative Director, the creative function was brand new and therefore, operating without a foundation. There was no intake process, no shared workflow system, no SLAs, and no consistent way to onboard new designers or align cross-functional teams. It was up to me to build it. As the company grew — scaling from a handful of fintech clients to eight, including Affirm, PNC, US Bank, and LendingPoint — the gap between creative demand and operational capacity became critical.
I built the DesignOps infrastructure from scratch: defining how work came in, how it moved through the team, how long it should take, and how to keep quality consistent across a growing client portfolio operating under strict compliance constraints. The result was a creative operations function that scaled with the business — reducing time-to-market by 30%, cutting UI bugs by 75%, and giving leadership full visibility into team capacity for the first time.
PROBLEM
A growing fintech startup with no operational infrastructure to support it
Quanta was scaling fast. New enterprise clients were onboarding regularly, each bringing distinct brand guidelines, compliance requirements, and content needs. The creative team — a small, remote group — was fielding requests from multiple stakeholders simultaneously, with no formal way to capture, prioritize, or track work.
The consequences were predictable: requests were missed or delayed, priorities shifted without notice, designers were context-switching constantly, and cross-functional partners — product, engineering, compliance, sales — had no visibility into where their work stood. There was no shared language for "done," no agreement on turnaround expectations, and no system for onboarding new team members quickly enough to keep pace with growth.
Scaling headcount alone wasn't the answer. The team needed infrastructure.
My Role
As VP of Marketing and Creative Operations, I owned both the strategic direction and hands-on implementation of the DesignOps function:
Creative Operations Strategy & Roadmap
Workflow Design & Systems Implementation
Team Leadership & Onboarding
Cross-Functional Alignment & Stakeholder Communication
In-Market Performance Monitoring
PROCESS
A structured, four-part approach to building ops infrastructure that actually gets adopted
Building DesignOps in a startup environment requires balancing rigor with pragmatism. The goal wasn't to impose a perfect system — it was to create just enough structure to eliminate chaos, give the team breathing room, and make the work visible to the people who needed to see it.
STEP 1 — AUDIT & DIAGNOSIS
Discovery: mapping the chaos before designing the system
Before building anything, I mapped the current state: how requests were coming in (Slack, email, verbal), where they were getting stuck, how long work was actually taking versus how long stakeholders expected it to take, and where quality was breaking down.
I interviewed designers, product managers, compliance leads, and client stakeholders to understand friction from every angle.
What emerged was a clear picture: the problem wasn't capacity — it was visibility and process. Work was being done; it just wasn't being done in a way anyone could track, plan around, or learn from.
STEP 2 — CREATIVE INTAKE PROCESS
Defining how work enters the system
The first structural piece was a formal creative intake process — a standardized way for any stakeholder to submit a request, with enough information for the team to scope, prioritize, and execute it without back-and-forth.
The intake process defined:
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Required brief fields: project type, client, deadline, compliance dependencies, assets needed, and approval contacts
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Priority tiers: urgent (same-day response), standard (3-day SLA), and backlog (scheduled sprint)
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Submission channel: centralized in Asana, eliminating the fragmented Slack/email request pattern
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Intake review cadence: a weekly triage session where new requests were scoped, assigned, and scheduled
The impact was immediate. Designers stopped being interrupted mid-project by ad hoc requests. Stakeholders knew exactly where to go and what information to provide. The team could plan their week with confidence instead of reacting to whatever landed first.
STEP 3 — SLA FRAMEWORK & AGILE WORKFLOW
Making turnaround times explicit and workflow visible
With intake formalized, the next layer was establishing service level agreements (SLAs) — explicit commitments about how long different types of work would take, and under what conditions.
SLAs were tiered by complexity (below):
The Agile workflow also created a regular feedback loop — sprint retrospectives surfaced bottlenecks early, and documented learnings were used to refine processes across subscription-based client engagements.
Alongside the SLA framework, I integrated an Agile project management structure into the team's workflow — introducing sprint planning, daily standups, and retrospectives. This was then expanded company-wide through Asana, giving the CEO and executive team line-of-sight into creative capacity, active projects, and delivery timelines for the first time.
REQUEST TYPE
Copy/content edits
1 business day
Minor revisions only
REQUEST TYPE
Single-channel asset
3 business days
Email, SMS, or in-app
REQUEST TYPE
Multi-channel campaign
5–7 business days
Full creative development
REQUEST TYPE
Design system update
2-week sprint cycle
Component library governance
REQUEST TYPE
New client onboarding
3-week onboarding sprint
Full brand integration
STEP 4 — TEAM ONBOARDING & CAPACITY PLANNING
Building a team that could scale without breaking
As the client roster grew, the creative team needed to grow with it. I developed a structured onboarding framework so new designers could contribute meaningfully within their first two weeks — reducing the ramp-up time that had previously stretched to 4–6 weeks of informal shadowing.
The onboarding framework included:
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A design system orientation guide — covering component library, design tokens, brand guidelines, and compliance rules
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A client context brief for each active engagement — personas, tone of voice, regulatory constraints, and approval workflows
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An Asana workspace walkthrough — intake process, SLA expectations, sprint structure, and communication norms
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A 30/60/90 day checklist with clear milestones for independent contribution
Capacity planning was formalized through Asana's workload view — allowing me to model headcount needs against projected client growth, identify utilization risk before it became a bottleneck, and make the case for additional headcount with data rather than gut feel.
SOLUTION
Turning operational chaos into a living, working creative infrastructure
The DesignOps system that emerged was not a static set of documents — it was a living operational foundation integrated into how the team worked every day:
A centralized Asana workspace serving as the single source of truth for all creative work across 8+ fintech clients
A tiered SLA framework with explicit turnaround commitments for every request type
A structured intake process that eliminated ad hoc requests and gave the team plannable workloads
An Agile workflow adapted for a creative environment — sprint-based, retrospective-informed, and expandable across departments
A scalable onboarding framework that brought new designers up to speed in two weeks, not six
A capacity planning model that gave leadership real-time visibility into team utilization and growth readiness
OUTCOME
What changed when creative operations had a foundation
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Designers shifted from reactive, interrupt-driven work to planned, sprint-based execution
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Stakeholders gained confidence in delivery timelines — reducing escalations and last-minute pressure
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Compliance and legal review was integrated into the workflow rather than bolted on at the end
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The Agile framework expanded beyond the creative team, improving cross-functional coordination company-wide
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Sprint retrospectives created a documented learning system that improved processes across client engagements over time
-30%
Reduction in time-to-market through Agile workflow implementation and creative intake process design
-75%
Reduction in UI bugs through design system governance and standardized component library across 8+ clients
2 wks
New designer onboarding time, down from 4–6 weeks of informal ramp-up
100%
Cross-functional visibility into creative pipeline — from designers to CEO — for the first time in company history
IMPACT
Why DesignOps infrastructure is a business investment, not an overhead cost
This case study demonstrates what's possible when creative operations are treated as a strategic function rather than an administrative afterthought. The systems built here — intake, SLAs, Agile workflow, onboarding — didn't just make the creative team more efficient. They made the entire company more predictable, more aligned, and better equipped to scale.
In a regulated, high-velocity fintech environment, operational clarity is not optional. Compliance reviews can't be rushed. Client brand standards can't drift. Deadlines matter. The DesignOps infrastructure built at Quanta created the conditions for quality to be consistent and delivery to be reliable — even as the client roster doubled and the team grew.
I bring this same approach to every environment: building the operational systems that let creative teams focus on what they do best, at the speed and scale the business demands.
Build intake before adding headcount
More designers without a clear intake process just means more chaos at higher volume. The system has to come first.
SLAs create psychological safety
When turnaround expectations are explicit, designers stop carrying the anxiety of unstated stakeholder expectations — and stakeholders stop assuming "urgent" means "today."
Agile works in creative environments — with adaptation
Sprint planning and retrospectives transfer directly. Daily standups need to be kept short and focused on blockers, not status updates. The format matters less than the rhythm.
Visibility is the prerequisite for trust
Leadership doesn't need to know every detail of every project. They need to know the system is working. Real-time visibility in Asana gave executives confidence that creative operations were under control — and created space for the team to do deep work without constant check-ins.