— James Hevey and James Zhao, YLD / Source (YouTube)
It may be easier to sell the design system externally than internally. The client may want the design system because they recognize its advantages. But that doesn’t mean that the design system will be pushed internally. A design system in a federated approach means additional work for each individual product team. And the goal of the product teams might not be overall consistency. Therefore, an overall goal of the design system must be defined and agreed upon. The goal can be e.g. consistency, speed or growth. Only then are the teams aligned to work towards this goal and invest their time.
Following you find a collection of advantages of design systems in general. You could use these to make the design system attractive for your customer.
Give your design system an identity. Don’t treat it like a waste product.
Give your system a Name and sell it as a product (Product vs. project)
A design system allows a stronger focus for product teams. It covers the most repetitive problems so that product teams can focus on their specific problems.
Create a centralized team around your design system (Team setup) and invite the product team to collaborate in a federated way.
The design system offers a single source of truth because everything is documented in one place.
Start to Document everything.
A design system helps you to focus on the fundament of your design.
Setup a Goal to control the outcome of your design system.
A design system offers an improved scaleability.
Create a core design system and nest other systems (Architecture).
A design system offers a improved consistency.
Make an Inventory which shows that the current design is not cohesive.
A design system helps to onboard new colleagues in a short amount of time because it offers a basic and holistic view on the products.
Use your design system for a Onboarding of new colleagues.
Show the previous success of your design systems. If you haven't created any design systems yet, start analyzing your work from day 1, so that you can show statistics at the end.
Use Analytics to get buy-in.