Editorial Articles

When building a house from scratch, you start with plans. You have a vision of what the house will look like, you build the foundations, walls, then roof. Between the day that you agree what your vision is and the day you finish the build, the environment doesn’t really change.

When it comes to projects involving the internet, between the day that you decide what your vision is and the day you complete, everything can change. The way consumers use it, the technology, how your competition is working, it all changes. Every day.

Agile working is based on Japanese manufacturing systems. Also known as ‘lean’ or ‘just in time,’ agile working is a concept focusing on delivering value where it is most important. Going against traditional project management, it encourages enhancements, and project revisions on a daily basis. There is no start, middle and end but instead daily iterations that help inform next steps. Because AGILE encourages feedback everyday, it ensures that decisions are always current. It also ensures that poor decisions are spotted quickly so ‘waste’ is minimised. The net result is a faster development cycle that produces a more relevant product at a lower price.

Although an obvious way of working with the internet, it can jar with clients and their agencies. Most client/agency relationships begin with a ‘Statement of Work’. This spells out who does what, for how many hours. It is designed to ensure clients get value for money and the agency knows what is expected of it. The problem with documents like this is a) clients don’t always know what they want upfront and b) agencies (terrified of having to overcommit resources) penalise clients if they deviate from the scope.

Traditionally, a project would be scoped in three weeks. Build would be 4-16 weeks, beta would launch in week 17 and the new website delivered in week 20. But there is so much potential for the project to go wrong:
 

• all parties discuss (read, disagree) on the site functionality, scope closes with a mix of requirements but no prioritisation
• competitors launch new offerings impacting original scope which now needs to be changed at additional cost
• a tweak request from the marketing six weeks into the build gets rejected on the grounds of budget
• project runs late and the scope is cut to meet the deadline
• the beta site has bugs in it
• project is delivered late
• changes in the market over the last five weeks require a new set of website features which render the site conversion lower than expected

This may sound like a pessimistic version of events but it is extremely common. What starts off as a well-intentioned project becomes an exercise in project management rather than an exercise in problem solving. People work to scope not need.

Approaching the same challenge, the ‘agile’ agency would address the need as follows:

Agency: “Why do you want a new website?”
Client: “Because we need better conversion rates.”
Agency: “On all products?”
Client: “All would be nice, but we really care about Widget B – it is 62% of our sales”
Agency: “Ok – let us fix that page first.”

And so on. A new website hasn’t been built. Instead, the specific needs have been addressed.

A client has to understand why it wants to change its website. An agency has to be prepared to be flexible and review the project scope on a daily basis as the internet environment changes. Both parties have to be clear on the need and test constantly, encouraging fast failure to get it right. Even if it means starting from scratch every day for the first three weeks. 

Martin McNulty
Client Services Director, Forward3D