Tackling the 3 Problems that Prevent Web Development Flow

I specialise in helping companies that develop websites. Part of that is giving them training and consultancy around using Lean and Agile methods, specially tailored and focused for the web.

One of the things I'm often asked about is how to improve estimates for projects. I think think a lot of the time, what this question really boils down to is: how do you get better control of the time that it takes to develop, deliver and get paid for a web development project? I think the answer is by making sure that you keep a close eye on those aspects of the web development process that are outside your control and may take FOREVER. Here are three problems you should really keep an eye on.

Problem: Late/Non-arrival of assets

This is the biggie. Many clients who commission web sites do not understand how much extra work is involved in preparing "assets" for the web. By assets, I mean any kind of content, written copy, graphics, images, sounds, video. The effort required in writing good copy for the web is especially underestimated.

Solution

Make it clear which content aspects of the website your client is responsible for producing. Make it clear that, in your experience, this is an aspect of web site production that affects timescales. If the issue is web copy, suggest that they hire (or you hire) a good web copywriter to produce the copy.

Problem: Lack of sign-off

Actually, this is another biggie. Actually it's two.

• For the client mucking about with designs endlessly is (seemingly) much less risky than exposing it to the world.
• In a lot of hierarchies, many, many people have the power to say no, very few people have the power to say yes.

Solution

Make it clear how much lack of sign-off costs. One way to do this is to take the costs of lack of sign-off out of the development budget! I have recently seen this work with termendously powerful effect with one of my clients. Another way is to offer discounts if sign-off happens within certain periods. Make it clear that quotes are valid and timescales can only be honoured if sign-off.

If they really do want to see hundreds of different designs, tinker with things endlessly. That's fine. But that needs to be on a time and materials basis.

Problem: Unavailability for Meetings and Feedback

Everybody's busy. Client's often express the wish that you would "just go away" and do the website. Unfortunately, quite often, what happens is the opposite - they "just go away". They stop responding to email and phone calls. This can be because they're very, very busy, but it can also because their business is changing in ways that mean that they won't need your website anymore.

Solution

This is an impossible situation and you have to make sure that your client understands this. If the client isn't available for meetings, or sends someone to meetings who is not really empowered to make decisions, make it clear to the client that the project is stalled and that no work is being done on it until they provide their input. Again, it's also very valuable to make clear how much this lack of contact is costing. Meetings with juniors who have no power to make decisions aren't free.

If they really are too busy. By far the best thing to is to sell them inidividual iterations. This provides them with the clean "Just Do It" experience that they seem to crave, whilst at the same time reducing risks for you. If you provide them with a working prototype at the end of every iteration, there's a much better chance that they'll come back for more.

I cover these problems, and their solutions in more detail in my course Building the Lean Web Development Team

If you liked this blog post you might like: "Six Things you Really Need to Know about your Customer" and "I'm your software developer, and I'm listening"


For further information, contact mark.stringer@gmail.com (07736 807 604)

Making creative and business sit together with less conflict

One of the big questions raised time and time again by those involved in supporting and developing creative businesses is why it is that creative people are so good (and prolific) at starting businesses but not so good at sustaining and growing them?

Many more businesses are started by creative practitioners than those from a business background. Creative businesses are responsible for more new job creation than any other area of economic activity in the UK. London is a world powerhouse of creative business and yet despite this the failure rate of creative businesses is very high and of those that make it past the 3 year mark, many never grow beyond a dozen or so employees.

While there are a multitude of reasons given for this, such as the unwillingness of those that run such businesses to break through the 'lifestyle' barrier needed to grow or sustain a business to the difficulty in accessing investment, there is an important factor that is common to most, if not all, such businesses. This is the conflict between creative process and business process. It is not an untruth to reflect that these two areas of discipline are simply very different and require different attitudes, skills and knowledge but to end the consideration here is also neglectful.

One way to consider the root of the creative and business conflict is to look at the way that the processes that traditionally underpin creative and business activity are shaped. Business planning and execution is understood as linear. To attract investment or secure borrowing in order to build a business so that it can be sold or can realise the long term exploitation of IP is understood to require 3 year projections that provide a month by month picture and use language that suggests risk reduction achieved through careful long term planning. Here change is to be managed rather than embraced.

Creative people are at their strongest and happiest when thinking and working cyclically, embracing risk and dealing with constant change. This is true of those engaged in the creative application of science and art. Such people make hypothesis, explore and test such hypothesis, review the results of this activity and then adjust their hypothesis accordingly. It also true that business planning should be constantly reviewed and updated in light of progress made and lessons learned. Therefore cyclical activity is also common to the ongoing delivery of such plans even if it does not make the initial research and preparation of such plans any more palatable to the creative person. It does however give us a very important pointer to finding new ways of addressing this challenge.

Clearly we need to continue developing new processes and practices for engaging business heads with creative practitioners in ways that allow them to develop long term sustainable relationships. One such process I will refer to as Agile Business Planning. By using Agile process as the basis for business planning and development delivery we allow the creative practitioner to use processes that are familiar as they are cyclical, embrace change and risk continually and yet deliver continual and visible outcome. Such process is also SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time managed) and can dovetail with the long term visioning and projection orientated nature of established business planning practice. It is simply delivered week by week, month by month, using a set of tools that are owned and understood equally well by the business head and the creative head and therefore reduce conflict allowing the creative business to grow and become sustained.