Is Governance Just Theater?

Live recording of the fortnightly podcast Design Systems WTF (back for season two!), where Luke Murphy and Michelle Chin attempt to combat all the amazing wtf in design systems. In each episode, they answer a single question around design system troubles with a Q&A from the live audience.

Governance seems to be one of those fancy words that gets thrown around a lot by design system people - but what level of governance is actually worthwhile, and how much of it is theater? Michelle and Luke will dive into governance, what level is good enough, and what bits they think you should scrap.

Show notes

• Brad Frost's governance flowchart — the component approval flow Michelle borrowed and adapted: A Design System Governance Process. Also available as a Figma community file, and his lighter-touch follow-up: Master design system governance with this one weird trick
• Nathan Curtis on governance and contribution — his writing on contribution models referenced in the episode: Contributions to Design Systems and Team Models for Scaling a Design System
• Managing Chaos: Digital Governance by Design by Lisa Welchman — Michelle's book recommendation for adding process in a way that isn't "gross", with a historical look at how web governance emerged: Rosenfeld Media
• Org Design for Design Orgs by Peter Merholz & Kristin Skinner — Luke's companion-piece recommendation on ritual and process for design teams, transferable to design systems: petermerholz.com / O'Reilly
• Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul — the Netflix documentary on Juul and "how not to do a startup": Netflix