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Why Discovery is Crucial to Project Success.

bigshifter · December 28, 2016 ·

The dot-com that almost ‘dot-crashed’

Many years ago, I was a part of a design agency that was building its first ‘dot.com‘. After eight months, we delivered version one and to be honest, it was full of bugs and we were all exhausted from weeks of late night coding. That first version was ‘code thrashing’ at its finest. We threw code at the requirements the project stakeholders were dreaming up and the frustrating part was that those were changing… every day.

Nothing was documented except for madly scribbled notes and any commenting that we had time to accomplish within our code. Beyond that, all decisions were made during coding sessions and ad-hoc hallway conversations. The product was miserable. Crashing servers, lost data, mysteriously vanishing items in customer shopping carts… it was ugly. But no rest for the weary, the boss-man came to us saying he wanted the next release to happen in six months. We hung our heads in defeat. How in the world were we going to do this?

I rallied the team together to discuss how we were going to hit this next deadline without the same issues that were in the current version. Throughout our initial team meetings, the same theme kept popping up, we did not have any documentation detailing what we were building and why. Being new to formal software development, we didn’t know what we didn’t know so we started researching. How do we collect what the business wants, and even more critical, what questions do we ask? We looked at what other software development shops were doing and pieced together a process we thought would work for us.

411 Process PHoto

We came up with our own process diagram that we affectionately call the “411 Method” which was presented to the stakeholders. This method was a 4 phase, 11 step software method that gave us a software development process that included documentation, quality assurance (QA) and testing. We didn’t see a downside to this process, except one thing. We wanted two months for meetings, discovery and documentation and then 4 months to build out the solution.

After presenting this process to the project stakeholders, I thought they were going to die. They laughed at the idea. We had just spent 8 months trying to figure out version one and we delivered something less than spectacular and now we wanted only 4 months to code the new version? It was one of those decisions in my career where there was a rush in my ears and sweat trickling down my back. But I stayed firm as I was representing my team. The management team finally caved and gave us our timeline. Now we had to deliver.

We spent 8 weeks on discovery. We dissected the current version of the site and kept requirements that made sense and threw out the rest. We met with the project stakeholders and documented any additional requirements that they desired. We submitted those documents for the management team for approval and we were off to the races. 

In short, we delivered on time, with minimal issues, and with a complete version two solution that covered all of the project stakeholders needs. Version 2 of the project is when we started making money as well so we were all very happy with our new process. The main difference between version one and version two was that we took the time for discovery. We took the time to ask questions, communicate concerns and come to an agreement on scope, resources and the timeline. I’ve never forgotten how important discovery is to agencies, projects, clients and my sanity.

What is Project Discovery?

Project discovery is taking the time to find out what we know, and don’t know, about a client’s business needs for a specific project. It’s also an effort for the client and the agency to further develop their working relationship before a project even begins.  Many times, the discovery process finds weaknesses in the client’s understanding of their website and exposes details that they may not know about their business processes.

Project discovery can be as simple as an online form collecting information from a client or as complex as multiple day workshops where an agency will meet with the client to dive into their business requirements. 

Notice I never said ‘how’ the work will accomplish things. Or with ‘what’ technology the solution will use to get the work done. That is not the core goal of the discovery process. On smaller projects, those answers could be a part of your discovery document in a recommendations section.

Larger projects may require a separate set of documentation called technical requirements document that detail how a solution would be produced and with what technologies that solution will employ to satisfy the business requirements in the discovery document.

Discovery is a critical part of any website project. Some agencies call discovery different names like Phase Zero, Pre-Planning, or Recon. It doesn’t matter what they call it, what matters is that it is accomplished. 

Resistance to Discovery 

The project discovery phase is often seen by agencies as something that clients don’t want to pay for but that they have to accomplish. Clients look at a “Discovery” line item on their estimates and ask, “What am I paying for now?” The answer here is to agree that discovery happens in all projects and clients need to be educated why it needs to happen. As an agency, it is your duty to educate your clients on the discovery phase and the value it brings. Without discovery, your damaging your relationship with your client and you are also putting a burden on your staff that will result in endless evenings, burned-out employees and high turnover.

The discovery phase of a project is one of the most important efforts a project team can accomplish because it lays the foundation for a project. The documentation that results from discovery is used by project managers, programmers, designers and the client. A good discovery document can be taken to any agency and used to help build out a project.

The discovery document is also organic, it changes throughout the project. Elements are added to it as they are uncovered and the project’s phases can be planned using the items identified in the document.

Why is discovery important to my project?

There are many people I have met at agencies that cringe at the thought of charging someone for a separate discovery phase for a project. But here’s the thing, you are already doing it! Many people I talked to have it built into their sales process and they never recover any of the professional consultant services they give the client during that sales phase. Time after time, these agencies spend hundreds of hours on proposals for clients that dig deep into the client’s business processes. Then the agency documents those and creates a proposal and estimate for the work required to get the project done. Guess what they just did? They provided a discovery document that the client can now use to shop to other agencies! I’ve done this countless numbers of times first-hand and it has never resulted in winning the job. 

Any project you work on requires discovery. I If you are a potential client of an agency and they do not have a discovery phase, you should ask for one or find an agency that knows how to do them. 

AGENCY BENEFITS

  • Transparency in the project
  • Revealing business processes that are directly and indirectly affect the website
  • Creating a foundation of open communication with your client
  • Creating a canonical document that can be referenced during the term of the project
  • It’s good for your agile processes you use for your project
  • Heads off scope-creep very quickly. 

CLIENT BENEFITS

  • Forces the client to think about why they want what they want. 
  • Discovers processes that may not have been thought about
  • Creates a deeper relationship with the agency
  • Creates a clear pathway to site releases, including future phases
  • Client will receive a more accurate estimate on the work
  • Allows for the addition of scope items in a way that is ordered and efficient

Discovery happens…

The discovery process is not an ‘if’ but a ‘when’. It happens on every website project that exists. There has to be answers to why a site exists. What will accomplish for the client?  

An agency needs to get paid for their consultant hours and a client needs to understand that project discovery is not a bad word but paves the way for a smooth project implementation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Erik Kulvinskas Head Shot Photo

Erik Kulvinskas has over 2 decades of web development experience that started way back before front-ends, back-ends, ‘dot-coms’, and social media. He loves making things easier to understand and more efficient to use. He loves spending time with his family, cycling, and volunteering. He enjoys empowering others to be their best and leading others by serving them.

The Art of Website Taxonomy

bigshifter · December 12, 2016 ·

Jar of M&M's Photo
Admit it, you want to sort this bad boy.

I remember as a kid, receiving a large package of M&M’s for my birthday. the first thing I needed to do was hide my gift. Living in a family of five kids meant you hid your valued things in a way that resembled squirrels hiding nuts for the winter. This squirrel hid his M&M’s in a secret hiding place where my siblings couldn’t find them. In my footlocker, locked with my trusty key. But what I found out years later is that all five of our footlockers had the same key. But I lived in vulnerable ignorance knowing that my stash of M&M’s was safe. Until I decided to sort my “melt in your mouth not in your hands” booty.

I loved sorting my M&M’s by color. Blue, yellow, green, orange, brown, and red bright, shiny chocolate wonders grouped all in tight circles waiting to be counted first and then consumed in succession to ensure I had the same number of M&M’s in each group. Back in the day, the red ones used to use red dye #2, which seemed to cause cancer, and thus the red M&M was discontinued for 10 years. Because this was the 70’s and we lived on the edge, I continued my eating until there was a single candy per color then I would snatch them up and eat all of the last ones together so as not to leave a single soldier behind. Little did I know that I was a practicing taxonomist at a very young age.

“Taxonomy – tax·on·o·my (takˈsänəmē) – the practice and science of classification of things or concepts, including the principles that underlie such classification”

— DICTIONARY.COM

What is taxonomy?

It’s a term used widely used in the biological sciences to classify plants and animals. Taxonomy is also used in just about every type of profession whether it’s grouping baking ingredients into the same bins at a cupcake shop or grouping all similar devices together on tables at an Apple Store.  

In the web content world, it’s making similar pieces of content stand out based on how those items have been classified. Simply put, taxonomy is categorizing stuff. Like colored M&Ms.

As humans, it just makes sense to group things together. Psychologists believe that there is a Similarity Gestalt Principle of Grouping. This principle states that “In order to interpret what we receive through our senses, they theorized that we attempt to organize this information into certain groups. This allows us to interpret the information completely without unneeded repetition.” Dr. Christopher L. Heffner , Perception, allpsych.com  Because the “whole is greater than the sum of its parts”, we want to group things together that are similar. It simplifies things for us so that they are easier to understand.

Taxonomy Drawing Image

How is Taxonomy Used on a Website?

Website content can be classified in several different ways. I have created a matrix that depicts the way that web content can be classified. It starts in the center where the most specific type of categorization called content types. As we work out from the center the objects location, tags and user role affect its taxonomy.

Content Types

The most specific classification of any object on a website is its content type. They have characteristics that make them different from other content types. I think we can all agree that Images are different than pages, and blog posts have different requirements than events. At Big Shifter, we use Squarespace for many of our client  projects. We’ll be using the Squarespace content types as examples.

Squarespace new Content Widget Image
Squarespace New Page Content Types
  • Pages
  • Product
  • Cover Page
  • Folder
  • Album
  • Index
  • Blog
  • Gallery
  • Events
  • Links

These types have attributes that are specific to them. For example, a Page has a title, image and content blocks to place content. However, a product has additional fields for a product description, pricing, and a product image.

Location

Squarespace Blog Location Widget Image
Squarespace Blog Location Widget

Location is simply where the content object is placed. When you create something you have to put it somewhere on the website. It could be placed at the top level (root) of the website, within a folder at the top level or within a group of similar content types like blog posts or events. For example, if I select ‘Blog’ using the Squarespace Content Type Taxonomy above, Squarespace creates a blog directory for me and I author my posts within that directory. It makes sense that all of my blog posts should be placed in the blog directory. In addition, the blog post content type has unique attributes such as its workflow from ‘draft’ to ‘published’.

Tags/Categorization

Tagging content with categories or keywords is also an important step to applying taxonomy to a website. This step is perhaps the most overlooked step in content management because it takes a bit more time to think about the content you are authoring and how it will be used on the website. The more content you have on your website, the more important tagging is to manage that content.

At Big Shifter, we have encountered client projects where there are tens of thousands of content objects and none of them have been categorized. Our clients felt the need to clean up their website and/or implement a new Content Management System (CMS) which is why they came to us. The problem is, we had to go through a long and laborious process of categorizing their content before we could continue with the rest of the project!

Do it now, or do it later, you will have to go through this exercise. It’s easier to categorize as you go rather than categorizing all of your content in one ginormous effort when you absolutely need it.

Squarespace Tags and Categories Image

Squarespace allows for both categories and tags within their hosted websites. These can be found in the Settings area of the particular content object you are trying to categorize.

These tags and categories come in very handy when you have a bunch of content on your site and you want to create a list of a subset of that content.

USE CASE

You want to create a new page on your website that grabs all of your blog posts that are tagged with the word ‘career’. If you have not been tagging your content consistently. Well, then it’s time for a content audit before you build your page to make sure that your blog posts are tagged correctly. If you’ve been tagging your posts correctly, then it’s just a matter of selecting a listcontent block on a page, and then configure that list to pull blog posts with the tag ‘career’.

Squarespace List Widget Filter Image
Squarespace: List Widget Filtering

ar all about content re-use. The more content you have on your site, the more you can leverage categories and tags! Imagine being able to leverage tags for RSS feeds, news article feeds, or directed content to different types of users.

User Roles (ACLs)

Content based on user roles or ACL’s (Access Control Lists) are the most generic form of taxonomy available in many CMS’s. The simplest example is that there is content available to logged in users that may not be available to anonymous users. Squarespace uses a workflow with its blog posts that allow for a post to be in ‘draft’ form while working on it, submit it for ‘review’ and the finally ‘publish’ that post for all to see. While not published, that blog post is only available to users that are logged into the admin console for your website. Anonymous users that visit your website cannot see unpublished content.

On an organizational Intranet, you could go further by classifying content for particular departments and then when a user logs in that is in that department group, they would be able to see that particular content. Pretty powerful stuff huh?

Why is Taxonomy important for my website?

Imagine if the next bag of M&M’s you open had all brown candies. Not much fun there. You might as well cram them all in your mouth and be done with it. This is what web content is like if none of it has been classified. It all looks the same. There is no way to filter out content you don’t want to displayed or easily find content you want to find.

When training our clients on content management or doing a site audit, the team at Big Shifter emphasizes the following items concerning site taxonomy. We encourage you to think of these as well during your content management efforts.

  1. Content Reuse – Reduce, recycle, reuse. You have probably heard this mantra through grade school about recycling. Well, content reuse is not so much about saving the environment as it is about minimizing effort. We are all busy, in my case lazy, so we don’t want to re-invent the wheel when managing content.  

    One of the main goals of any CMS is content reuse. To be able to author content in one place and reuse it in other areas and make it easier to retrieve. 
     
  2. Easier Content Management – To be able to find all your posts to do with ‘puppies’ over three years is much easier with tagged content rather than going through each article to find the words your used. Some may say, ‘well just use the site search!’. OK Skippy, that may work when your site isn’t very large but trust me, you probably don’t have that much time on your hands when you are mining though thousands of pieces of content.
     
  3. Content Cross-pollination – You will be able to reuse content in short notice to take advantage of of ideas you want to express.  You will be able to leverage older content, possibly years old, that is relevant to something you want to talk about today. 

Strategy

If you are planning your new website, strategize your content.

  • What types are there?
  • Where do they go?
  • What categorization will you need?

If you have an existing site, no matter how big or small, its time for an audit. You need to go through your content and apply your taxonomy strategy to your existing database. Next, reuse that content, leverage your CMS to make queries against your content repository and start reusing the content you spent some much time creating!

Better yet, drop Big Shifter a line, let us know your needs and we’ll be glad to kick off a content management strategy session with you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Erik Kulvinskas Head Shot Photo

Erik Kulvinskas has over 2 decades of web development experience that started way back before front-ends, back-ends, ‘dot-coms’ and social media. He loves making things easier to understand and more efficient to use. He loves spending time with his family, cycling and volunteering. He enjoys empowering others to be their best and leading others by serving them.

Are you a generalist? There is a place for you in this world.

bigshifter · December 5, 2016 ·

To generalize or to specialize? That is the question. The vast working world requires both of course but in the web design and development agency space, it’s the generalist that will flourish and become the team lead, the agency V.P., and the owner of their future venture.

Generalists – those that know a bit about a lot.

The Generalist is a definition that seems to pursue those of us that have had longer careers in one focus or another. It seems we start out seeking out jobs where we can leverage our core skill-set which may be front end HTML/CSS and Javascript. Or, it could be backend technology like System Administration, AWS, NoSQL, MySQL, Java, Python, or some Content Management System (CMS). How about Project Management, Agile/Scrum, Kanban, Business Intelligence, and technical writing? Whatever specialty we choose at the beginning of our exciting career, over time we understand the need to learn about the other disciplines in our industry that touch our everyday work lives. Better yet, we realize that we have to become better at our specialty and to become more valuable to our teams.

I Am What I Am

I am a generalist. It’s something that used to be hard to admit to in the web development and design industry. Initially, I lived and breathed trying to become an expert in something, anything, to help bring value to the teams I was a part of. What followed was a vicious pursuit of my first certification, the hallowed MCSE+Internet.

Back in the day, certifications were needed to get your foot in the door anywhere let alone give credence to what you knew. Microsoft and its partners were churning out MCSE’s left and right. It got so bad that we called most of the people coming out of MCSE training ‘Paper Certs’. They had a piece of paper because they took a test, but they had little to no real-world experience, but I digress.

I received the certification and found very quickly that it didn’t mean very much in my industry. I can say I learned something in the process, but there was nothing like rolling up my sleeves and just doing the work that was in front of me. We were blazing ‘.com’ trails and the things we were doing didn’t exist so searching for answers didn’t reveal much. We were inventing the Internet of things, and there wasn’t any formal training for that: just a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and head-against-wall banging.

The Call for the Specialist

The industry kept calling for specialists in things like server farms, coding, design, UX, client management, and project management.  This need for specialists did a few things to these agencies

  1. It resulted in a LOT of agency overhead because of this type of specialist structure. Specialists were expensive because they were the only ones that knew about the particular technology void you were trying to fill. However, there were consequences to this type of staffing structure.
  2. People that did not have any cross-training and therefore were ‘one-hit wonders.’ They just weren’t trained in real-life situations where one needs to have a breadth of knowledge to get their work done. If someone was out on vacation that knew a particular technology, the project you were working on just came to a halt until that person came back with their beach sunburn on their nose and flip-flop tan on their feet.
  3. The interesting thing was, that even though the call for specialists became a constant ringing in the ears, there was an unintended movement towards the need for generalists. We had to hire people that had an insight into the world around their specialty. It became clear that the inflexible team members that were not capable of, or willing to, learn about more than their core skill-set were the most frustrating to work with.

“…the most effective team members I have worked with have chops in more than one discipline”

I don’t want to belittle the value of someone becoming a pro in their craft, but the most effective team members I have worked with have chops in more than one discipline. They may major in design, UX, or coding, but they minor in project management, client management, or sales.

While there was, and is, a place for hiring specialists in larger companies, most web-based agencies know that they do not have the luxury of hiring silo’d workers. It’s interesting to see job postings out there in the wild. It seems that they all have the “kitchen sink” list of skill-sets they want in the advertised position. It’s obvious they are trying to get the best bang for their buck in hiring someone.

You can also imagine that hiring people that can wear multiple hats allows for scalability. If that agency wants to expand products and services into areas where their team members have the experience, it is a lot easier to do this if some knowledge is already in-house. There is also a significant advantage to knowledge overlap within a team. A front end developer that can also write business requirements and communicate well with clients goes a lot further than a developer that only wants to sit in their corner and sling code.

In his book called Evolutionaries Carter Phipps says that it is a good thing to know “a little bit about a lot.” A goal we should all have is to know more about the ancillary processes and disciplines that work hand in hand with our specialty.

Specialize in SOMETHING

Being a generalist does not mean you don’t need to hone particular skill-sets. You’ve got to be good at something that brings your marquis value to an organization. But there are “halo” skills that you need to explore and experience to make the skill-set you specialize in more valuable. For example, if you are a front end web developer that loves HTML, LESS, Sass, JavaScript, and frameworks, they may be reading up on User Experience (UX) methodologies is worth your while. Researching the latest design trends will also be helpful when you integrate with the designers that will send you their works.

At the same time, if you work in or with an agency, you should have a working knowledge of business requirements gathering and documentation. You need to know how to relate complex concepts to business people. Yeah, that’s right, you should know how to write as well. It’s a skill-set that is being lost in exchange for more exciting things. But that is for another blog post.

I think that there are jobs in this world that require specialists and these specialists need to be the best at what they do. But in the world of web agencies where, design, UX, databases, backend management, project management, agile practices, client empathy, and sales are all key components; the generalist has the upper hand.

WHERE ELSE TO READ

  • Forbes article by Meghan Casserly – The Secret Power Of The Generalist — And How They’ll Rule The Future
  • Are You a Generalist Who Dreams of Being an Expert? – Cheryl Heller
  • Generalists Get Better Job Offers Than Specialists – Harvard Business Review
  • Generalists vs Specialists – Dr Joos Meyer

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Erik Kulvinskas Head Shot Photo

Erik Kulvinskas has over 2 decades of web development experience that started way back before front-ends, back-ends, ‘dot-coms’, and social media. He loves making things easier to understand and more efficient to use. He loves spending time with his family, cycling, and volunteering. He enjoys empowering others to be their best and leading others by serving them.

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