Shared ownership
Clear responsibilities make a system easier to trust and contribute to.
Services / Governance & Scale
Help good systems survive growth.
Clear ownership, standards and a process for exceptions, so a system stays trustworthy as more teams start depending on it, not just at launch.
Clear responsibilities make a system easier to trust and contribute to.
Principles and contribution paths reduce unnecessary debate.
Teams know who maintains the system and how decisions are made.
Governance evolves with the organisation instead of slowing it down.
Ownership, decisions and stewardship reinforce one another over time.
THE GOVERNANCE TENSION
Too little structure creates avoidable friction. Too much makes change costly. The useful balance depends on the organisation, the teams, the work and its consequences.
TOO LITTLE GOVERNANCE
Lightweight decisions reduce unnecessary cost while preserving quality. There is no single correct level of control for every system.
TOO MUCH GOVERNANCE
WHAT THE WORK CAN INVOLVE
DECISION + CHANGE
Good governance makes the established route clear and gives unfamiliar situations a way forward. An exception can be evidence that the guidance needs to evolve.
Clear principles and ownership help familiar changes move forward without unnecessary delay.
An exception is not automatically non-compliance. It may call for a considered adaptation, a test, or a change to the guidance itself.
Put the decision into practice in the system.
Make the change and its rationale visible to the people who depend on it.
Notice whether the change works in real use, and where new friction appears.
Use evidence, including repeated exceptions, to review whether the guidance still fits.
Repeated exceptions and real-world outcomes feed back into the rules, so governance stays appropriate as the system changes.
APPROACH
Start broad, follow real work, then focus on the moments where ownership or guidance would make a difference. Test the model in practice and let evidence shape what comes next.
See the products, teams, constraints and existing guidance in context.
Trace how choices are made in practice before assigning formal ownership.
Notice repeated debate, unclear exceptions and places where work gets stuck.
Shape responsibilities and useful guidance around the decisions people actually make.
Try the model on a live contribution or change; a diagram alone is not validation.
Learn where the guidance fits, where it strains and what context the exception reveals.
Use outcomes and repeated exceptions to refine the rules and choose what needs attention next.
Observed outcomes and exceptions return to the model, informing the next decision and priority.
EVIDENCE
Selected work and thinking where clearer ownership, decisions and stewardship helped systems keep working as they grew.
CASE STUDY
I designed a human-in-the-loop audit platform that helped subject matter experts resolve disagreements between researchers and an AI agent—while capturing the reasoning behind every decision.
ARTICLE
A design system is more than a collection of reusable components. It’s the shared set of principles, relationships, decisions, and practices that help teams create consistent, accessible, and adaptable products.
RECOGNITION
DECISION FRICTION
Everyone knows something needs to change, but nobody knows who can decide.
Small contributions require too many conversations.
Different teams interpret the same standards differently.
Exceptions accumulate without ever changing the underlying rule.
The people maintaining the system have responsibility without authority.
Decisions are made, but nobody can find out later why they were made.
START WITH THE FRICTION
We can look at what’s creating the friction and work out what needs to become clearer.
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