Hi James! Here’s my little throw-in:
When it comes to design systems, I personally believe that they’re made to solve human problems.
These problems would many at times pose to be around communication. Hence, I’d offer two recommendations here:
Firstly, ensuring that all or at best, the basic constituents necessary, are in place. These would include but not limited to: a visual language understandable by the team; this may be reflected in a properly-outlined style guide, functional interface components, and a set of standards that would guide the use of those components.
Secondly, for technical recommendations, I’d go with any of these tools to build your design team (might be a tad biased with my choices, but they work for me) - InvisionApp (invisionapp.com) & Figma (figma.com). My reason for these is, they both work as easy-to-use, flexible yet effective tools.
Just to add this for anyone who’d love to see this: most design systems are merely pattern libraries and style guides. A design system should embody a system of various concepts, and pose a shared platform where teams can create, collaborate, and build.