Governance Setup

Who decides what

A design system without governance runs in circles. Who is allowed to change tokens? When does a component become breaking? How does an audit finding land in a release? We set up approval workflows, contribution models, and quality gates — so compliance is not a bottleneck but a standard process.

Work packages

Roles

Who is owner, who is reviewer, who is the escalation instance. A RACI matrix for tokens, components, and patterns — along real workflows, not the org chart.

Processes

RFC for structural changes, lightweight review for additions, a clear release model. Decisions are traceable, discussions archived.

Quality gates

CI checks for token drift, visual regression, accessibility audits. What does not pass does not ship — and nobody has to argue about it.

Adoption

A migration path for legacy projects, office hours instead of tickets, measurable adoption rate. Governance that gets used, not documents nobody reads.

Questions

Questions Governance answers.

  • Ownership

    Who has the final say on changes to tokens, components, and patterns?

  • Escalation

    What happens when owner and consumer disagree — is there a clear path?

  • Reviews

    Are changes to the design system reviewed with the same rigour as product code?

  • Release model

    Is there a versioned release model — or does every commit ship directly?

  • Compliance gate

    Who checks whether new components meet accessibility, GDPR, and AI Act requirements before they ship?

  • Adoption signal

    Do you know which teams actually use the system — and which silently fork?

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design system governance.

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