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Step 2 of 4

Versioning

Can the system change without breaking its consumers by surprise?

Skip any question you cannot answer yet — it will not count against you.

How is the design system distributed to product teams?

Question 1

Distribution decides everything downstream: you cannot version, deprecate or measure what teams copy and paste.

How disciplined is your use of semantic versioning?

Question 2

SemVer is a promise about breakage. Its value comes from being kept every single time.

Do consumers get a changelog they can act on?

Question 3

"What changed and do I have to do anything?" — answered before anyone has to ask.

Is there a deprecation policy with a defined window before removal?

Question 4

A predictable removal window is what lets product teams plan instead of firefight.

How well are the design source of truth (e.g. Figma library) and the code release kept in sync?

Question 5

Two sources of truth that drift apart create the most expensive kind of rework: silent disagreement.

What support do teams get when a major version requires them to change their code?

Question 6

Migration effort that is not budgeted by the system team is silently paid by every product team, several times over.