Phase 1: Discovery & Orientation

The first two weeks focus on understanding your role and organizational context. Whether you're in a leadership position, management role, or individual contributor focusing on a specific discipline, this phase sets the foundation for everything that follows.

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Phase 1 Deliverables

The first two weeks require multiple complementary exercises: understanding the people, understanding the products, defining success metrics, and establishing foundations. Together, these give you complete visibility into your design system's ecosystem and set you up for execution.

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Building Your Communication Foundation

Your stakeholder and products mapping becomes the foundation for your communication plan (developed in Phase 2):

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Initial Touchpoints to Establish

• Weekly calls with key partners
• Regular updates sharing progress and insights
• One-on-one sessions for deeper relationship building
• Informal connections through lunch breaks and casual interactions
• Office hours for open collaboration and knowledge sharing

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Questions to Answer Through Discovery

During your stakeholder conversations, gather insights on:

1. Current state: How do teams work today?
2. Pain points: What slows them down?
3. Goals: What are they trying to achieve?
4. Constraints: What blocks them?
5. Success criteria: How do they measure success?
6. Product landscape: Which products do they own?
7. Platform needs: What platforms are priorities?
8. Success criteria: How does the organization measure impact?
9. Technical infrastructure: What tools and systems are in place?

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Week-by-Week Breakdown

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Outputs from Phase 1

By end of Phase 1, you should have:

People Mapping:

Product Mapping:

Success Framework:

Foundations:

Combined Outputs:

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Next Steps

With your stakeholder and product maps complete, success metrics defined, and foundations established, you're ready to move to Phase 2: Strategy Development. You'll build a comprehensive communication plan, create an adoption roadmap, and establish the ceremonies and cadences that will drive your design system's success.