Components: Big, Small, or Do 'em All?
summary
Design systems need rules: build only what a majority uses, or enable teams to compose. Large systems vary — Carbon has 39 components, Salesforce 85; Atlassian grows from 26 to 50 and Atlas kit shows 172 breaking changes over years. A filter drawer built centrally works for ~30% of teams (about 15 teams) and a shared data table lands in ~50% of repos; a centrally built calendar fails to get adoption. Favor configurable, composable pieces like a configurable card and host team-owned shared libraries between core and local kits.
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chapters (6)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:00Growth and scope challenges
- 6:38The role of bigger components
- 17:46Flexibility through composition
- 28:07Shared libraries and ownership
- 35:17Q&A and closing thoughts
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