Paul Boag, one of the founders and directors of Headscape, once said; “We specialise in sh*t projects.”

If, like me, you run projects for a normal, every day web agency. If you do not always get the opportunity to be working with the latest cool technology or utilize the next whizz bang idea. If you don’t build sites for rock bands or the latest cool technology start-ups. How do you keep you team excited and enthusiastic about their day jobs? After all, if your team is not interested in the work that they are doing then they will not produce the high standards that you need and that they are capable of. This in turn is demotivating and you end up in a downward spiral.

How do you get your team excited about a project for brown paper bag manufacturers?

It doesn’t belong to you

The first thing to do is to promote ownership of the project within your team. Let them in on the solution. It can be tempting at times to solve (or try at least) all the problems yourself. It is much better to get your production team (designers and developers) in on the act as early as possible in the project. Do not present your designers with a list of things to do. Instead, give them a collection of problems that their design needs to solve. Do not dictate the technology that your developers must use. Instead give them the information that they need to choose the most suitable tools for the task.

Allow your team to shape the solution and they will take pride in the result. Let the project be their project. Not your project.

Express yourselves

The second thing to do is to allow your team the time and space to express themselves. Allow them to be creative; to try a new technique in a real project situation. Even if it is something very small in the grand scheme of the project it can act as the signature of your production team. This mark of ownership will inspire them to make sure that even the most mundane of projects can be the best that it can be.

Allow your techies to experiment with the new features of the latest programming language release. Allow your designers to put in that extra fun element that will only work in in the latest cool browsers. Give them the space play with a real project in a real life situation.

Using a new technique or a new technology can be enough to provoke the interest of your team. This means that the website for the brown paper bag manufacturers can be the most exciting project that you team has ever been a part of.

Slaves to the time line

Alarm bells are ringing. What about the time line! We have a deadline to meet.

And quite right too. These extra bells and whistles cannot get in the way of real targets and delivery milestones. However, if you build some time into your schedules to allow for this kind of experimentation you will have a happier, more enthusiastic and, ultimately, more productive team.

This will also encourage your team to keep developing their skill set knowing that they will get a chance to use their new found talents in real projects leading to a higher quality of work over all.

Is this something that you have tried? Or as a designer or developer have you tried to sneak little Easter Eggs into your work just to make sure that you still have a pulse at the end of the day? Let me know.

Risk, in the land of project management, is anything that could potentially get in the way of your project going according to plan and being delivered on time.

There are two types of risk; those that you can do something about, and, yes you guessed it, those that you can’t.

Let me give you some examples from my world as a web project manager at Headscape. Let’s say we have been asked to deliver a project to facilitate a small, but growing, web presence. The client has existing content which needs to be edited and integrated as well as new content that will be supplied by them. The client uses a third party system; previously not used by us but similar to systems we have used before. This third party system needs to be updated by the application we develop.

This is a limited, but not uncommon, project request. So what are the  main  risks here?

1. Content
   Content is always a risk. The single biggest reason why a project is delayed at Headscape is content. Clients never, ever, appreciate how long it will take them source, edit, and deliver content.
   This is a risk that is completely out of your control.
2. Third party system
   Whenever a third party system is involved (especially one that hasn’t been used before),  no matter how similar it is to current systems, you have a risk. There will be a learning curve for your team, documentation will most likely be inadequate, and there is bound to be a new release half way through development that will break everything you have managed to get working.
   This risk you can do something about.

Risky Business

Having located the risks what can we do about them?

Highlight them with the client from the very start. If you make the issue of content clear from the beginning, for example, it might, if you are really lucky, mean that the client will take it on board and actually deliver what they need to on time. Failing that it makes it a lot easier for them to swallow if it does end up being the reason a project is delayed.

Talk about potential issues with their third party system. Do not be afraid to present these to the client. My experience has been that, in the main, they appreciate a transparent approach.  You can legitimately build in time to the project timeline to allow for the research and learning involved. Even so, there is always an element of the unknown here. If something is going to go wrong with this project, it will involve interfacing with this third party system.

Build in contingency to the budget and the time line. You can not remove the risks but you can plan for them.

It’s easy to fall into the trap hoping that all will go well and you will have project that follows all the best possible scenarios.  If you close your eyes, and wish really hard, then you can sell a shorter time line and it might just work out for you. However, if you plan for the risks and build in the required contingency, you might even deliver early.

Clients love to be surprised like that.

As PM’s at Headscape we have started to work together  to launch each new project with a project risk assessment. Highlighting all the things that could be a risk to the project running smoothly. Things that are both internal and external to our environment. Things that we can do something about and things that we can’t.

Being aware of these risks and planning for them has had a big impact on our ability successfully set client expectations and deliver projects on time, and on budget.

The project I seem to spend most of my days on has recently had a new release.  We are really quite proud of it (it’s very pretty) and so I thought I would add  little note here so that you can all enjoy the frozen food goodness.

Paul has just published a case study all about it on Boagworld.

http://boagworld.com/usability/case_study_wiltshire_farm_food/

It’s very easy to indentify when something is wrong. It doesn’t matter if it’s a small one person task or a large project being undertaken by a whole team of people, finding issues is normally…  no, I would say, always possible; even easy to do. By spotting a problem you are nothing new. You are not doing anything different you do not stand out in any way. Solutions on the other hand are a rare commodity.

During my spell as the technical team lead at Headscape I tried to install something of a motto into the team. “Everything is possible, there is always a way.” And a few variations on that theme. When a project manager, or a client would approach me with a new piece of functionality or a new project or even just the beginnings of a new idea I tried to always approach it from the point of view that whatever they were asking for was possible to achieve. It was my job / my teams job to find the solution.

It sounds quite obvious really. We are a “solutions” business. Our job is essentially to solve our clients problems (even if they don’t see it that way). But this is not a concept that everyone has grasped. I’ve been involved in a number of teams who almost seemed to pride themselves on indentifying why a particular request wasn’t possible or was a silly idea.  Often talking themselves out of work in the process. In fact, thinking about it now, I wonder if that was the aim of the exercise. *smile*

Now I’m involved in project management I don’t want to hear about problems. Problems don’t help me. I want to hear about solutions.  Obviously there are often many issues with a particular request or piece of work. I’m not suggesting we just run along like a collection of blind robots and try to implement any idea that comes our way. But rather than just listing all the reasons why a given piece of functionality is a silly idea, think it through and offer an alternative solution.

If you approach every situation “knowing” that everything is possible and that there is always a solution then, in my experience, you will find it. And in a room full of people who are very capable of, and often very eager to, point out the issues you will stand out as the person who offers solutions.

It is very easy to find problems. The key is to find the solutions.

It’s amazing what we will say to get people to do what we want. Whether it be to win a sale from a new client, convince our boss that our latest bright idea is worth everybody’s time, or to just convince members of your team that this new project or methodology is really exciting, we have a tendency to exaggerate. But this can cause more of a headache than simply an interesting moral dilemma.

Don’t promise the Earth

Promising the Earth, in under six days, is easy. With the right people skills and experience it’s possible to sell any product or idea to just about anybody. The short term gains are obvious; you win the sale, your great idea goes into production, your team get really excited and motivated. But your exaggeration, or slight stretch of the truth, will become obvious pretty quickly.

The damage this causes can be long lasting or even irreversible. If you company gains a reputation for under estimating time scales on projects it will soon start to count against you. If you have exaggerated the potential benefits of your new structure or methodology, your next idea will not be so easily received. If you have told your team that this next project is earth shatteringly exciting and it turns out to be the same old dirge, you will have a problem motivating them in future.

The element of suprise

The positives of doing the reverse are massive. To surprise your new client by delivering a little early or providing an extra little feature can make the difference between them giving you those all important repeat sales. To be known as an individual who takes the extra care to double, triple check everything before it goes higher up the food chain can be the difference when that coveted promotion comes up. You get the idea.

It’s a very simple lesson really, but one which we so often ignore. If we over sell something; a product or our own skill set, we are digging ourselves a big hole. You create disappointment and negativity that had no reason to be there. What you provide might be just what’s needed but because it’s less that you promised it will not be as well received. Whereas if we under sell what we are providing, the positive impact of the delivery far outweigh what was delivered on its merits alone.

It’s a difficult balance to get. If you under sell too much, then nobody will want you. But that said; under sell, over deliver, is a good little motto to live by.