5 lessons design systems teams can learn from open-source maintainers

Design systems teams, which develop internal libraries used by engineers to create customer-facing products, often struggle to demonstrate their value within organizations due to their indirect contribution to revenue. To address this, they can learn from open-source maintainers who face similar challenges in gaining adoption and maintaining engagement with limited resources. By adopting strategies from open-source projects, design systems teams can benefit from clearly identifying their operational models, prioritizing maintenance over unchecked growth, and emphasizing the importance of comprehensive documentation to enhance user engagement and support. Additionally, aligning core values and goals with users' needs and effectively advocating for the system's benefits are essential for fostering adoption and sustained investment. The overarching lesson is to build narrowly with a focus on enabling developer users while learning widely from diverse sources, such as open-source practices, to maximize the system's impact.