Most design systems don't fail technically. They fail socially. The components are fine — but adoption stalls, teams fork, and the system slowly becomes a museum.
Treat the system as a product
It has users (engineers and designers), a roadmap, and a value proposition. If using the system is slower than not using it, people will route around it. Measure adoption like you'd measure any product metric.
Tokens before components
Design tokens are the contract between design and code. Get naming, theming, and structure right at the token layer and everything above it becomes consistent by default — including dark mode and accessibility.
Document the decisions, not just the props
The most valuable part of a mature system isn't the component API — it's the accumulated judgment about when and why to use each pattern. Capture that.
A design system scales when it makes the right thing the easy thing.