Design management consulting for product teams
I help founders, CTOs and design leads structure how design is run, staffed and connected to delivery, so design turns into product outcomes.
I am Fryderyk Pryjma, founder of CortexMine, private AI for regulated organizations. I take on a small number of selective advisory engagements like this one.
Design management overlaps with design ops consulting: it is the leadership layer above the operational one, so many engagements touch both.
Design management is how design gets planned, staffed, and connected to delivery. It overlaps with design ops consulting but sits closer to leadership: it is about how design creates business impact, not only how design operates day to day.
Design management vs design ops consulting
People often ask where design management ends and design ops consulting begins. My working answer: design ops consulting is the machinery, rituals, tooling, files, research repositories, handovers. Design management is one layer up, the roles, RACI, decision rights and staffing that make that machinery actually pay off. In practice I work across both, but this engagement is framed around leadership decisions, not tooling audits.
Related: Design Ops consulting · Research Operations · Design Ops resources.
Outcomes
- Clearer design roles and ownership across product and engineering.
- Stronger design-to-engineering collaboration with fewer handover gaps.
- Design decisions tied to business impact, not just craft.
- A design function you can scale without an immediate senior hire.
What you get
Design leadership review
A structured read of how design is set up today: roles, decision rights, workflow, delivery interface.
Roles and RACI
A shared map of who owns what across product, design and engineering, with the gaps named.
Design-to-delivery workflow
A workflow you can actually run, from discovery through spec handover and QA.
Fractional design leadership
Founder-led selective engagements: I work as your design leadership partner on a hybrid advisory and execution basis, so decisions do not wait and delivery does not stall.
Who it is for
- Product companies with designers but weak process around them.
- Founders building the first real design structure.
- CTOs and CPOs who want design to contribute to decisions, not just deliver screens.
Engagements usually start with a leadership review and either a fractional retainer or a workflow buildout. Same packages as Design Ops, adapted to your stage.
View pricingFrequently asked questions
Design management is the practice of running design as a function: how design gets planned, resourced, and connected to product and engineering. It answers who decides what, on what timeline, using which process, so design output turns into product outcomes.
Design ops focuses on the machinery around design: rituals, tools, files, research repositories, handovers. Design management works one layer up: roles, RACI, decision rights, staffing, and how design plugs into leadership. In real projects I usually touch both, but the engagement is framed by which one is currently the bottleneck.
These are founder-led, selective engagements delivered as a hybrid of advisory and execution. Where useful, I can cover leadership tasks such as 1:1s, hiring input, quality reviews and stakeholder alignment, while we build the structure that lets you hire the right person later.
Ready to get started?
30 minutes, no strings. You will leave with two to three concrete improvements.
DesignOps Maturity Self-Assessment
Get the DesignOps Maturity Self-Assessment + occasional notes on Design Ops & Research Ops.