The Digital Agency Project Management Process: Fail

The Agile Manifesto is 10 years old this year. And yet I've never managed a single project using a strict Scrum methodology. And it's my bet, that as long as I continue to work in a digital agency, the odds are, I never will.

And it's not through a lack of understanding of the process.. it's a lack of need. Unless you're one of the minority that work with clients on large scale platforms, retainers and dedicated teams, you're one of the majority that still work with clients that require a clearly defined end product, at a fixed date, for a fixed cost. I pay you this, you give me this. A scenario that is not supported by strict Scrum project management.

And a reason why Digital Agencies continue to use the standard 'Waterfall' method for software development to this day. As a reminder, Waterfall originated in the '70's, as a method for manufacturing and construction. Inherently flawed for software development in 2011. And a processes that guarantees more failures than successes when it comes to delivering projects, on time, on budget. Yes, to reiterate, we work with a process that has a higher probability of failure than success.

Jim Highsmith, coauthor of the Agile Manifesto, provides further insight to why this is in a recent article:

"Engineering, whatever the product, is inherently iterative— think a little, try an experiment, observe the results, revise. Sometimes the iterations are long, sometimes short, but engineers have never really operated on a linear, waterfall model—unless forced to by an organization process."

So with this in mind, as Interactive Producers in Agencies, what's the best method for us? Well.. to get to this it needs to come from one thing we know how to do:

Fail.

We need to learn from project failures. Each time improve. And know you're not the only one failing. Share failures. Allow others to avoid the same pitfalls. It's time the project management community starts talking and addressing a real problem in our industry. Build learnings and define processes that work within our agency limitations.

I'm going to make an effort to share more of these failures, from myself and others in our industry, on this blog. And from this, develop methods, actions and learnings relevant to digital agency production to increase the percentage of successful projects delivered.

HSBC: The worst brand on the internet

Regular readers, let me diverge for a moment. For the past 2 years HSBC have been my personal bank. And for the same amount of time, I've come to experience the worst example of customer service in the digital space. Which would be ok.. But when you are the eighth largest company in the world - and the most profitable bank, it's beyond inexcusable. The bar is set so low in the online banking arena, no one is even trying. And yet startups such as Mint.com prove you can be in finance, and still provide a functional and elegant user experience.

Here's 7 reasons why I believe HSBC are the worst brand on the internet:

1. 128 million customers. 868 Twitter followers. 8 tweets.

Don't go following @hsbc_com expecting the latest insights from this global powerhouse. 8 Tweets in total since Aug 09 including the zingers "New Archive 2009" and the unforgettable debut tweet "hsbc.com". I question why there are 868 followers.

2. Browser Support Policies circa 2002

HSBC still support IE6 (4.6 percent) and Firefox 2.x (less than 1 percent), but does not support Chrome which represents 22 percent of the population.

3. They manage to make consumer emails look like real SPAM

Below is an email from HSBC Security and Fraud Risk team. All the classic tell-tail signs of a SPAM email: unfamiliar sender address, inconsistent text formatting, multiple fonts, poor punctuation. Which would all be amusing.. if it wasn't actually from HSBC. I had to call the number to be sure.

4. They forgot to hire a User Experience Department

Basic user experience principles went out the door when they designed the HSBC Personal Banking site. Here is their patented 5 step login process, complete with inconsistent labeling, a univeral nav that is not universal, buttons on the same page that do the same thing, redundant steps and a ridiculously over-complicated mouse-controlled security keyboard.

5. Credit Card one site, Checking Account another site.

It's clear two completely different teams were tasked with building these sites.. and they didn't get along. Completely different login requirements, different terminology, different user experience.

6. Search Algorithm circa AltaVista

Want to search for information about HSBC Credit Cards? Sure, type "Credit Card" into the search box and wallah! The top result is an article about their plan to "create JV for Chinese Credit Card operation" The remaining 513 are almost as useful.

7. They serve popup ads in the middle of your online banking

They've found one more way to destroy any morsel of productivity by loading a Med Rec ad over the top of your screen while you try to actually complete a task. Brilliant.

Enough is enough.

How many sides do you influence?

It's a Producers job to ensure project Cost + Requirements matches Time + Resources upfront. A Producer can not be held accountable to deliver a project on time, on budget if they can not influence the sides necessary to ensure they are proportional.

Too many Producers are handed a project with disproportional sides.. the math doesn't add up. If you're one of those Producers, either question the expectations for success, or start balancing up those sides.

To-Do Task Managers: And then there was One Note

To-do lists are invaluable to coralle the many little actions and requests that invade your day. For years 3M benefitted from my obsession with filling my monitor borders with their sticky reminders. These days however my attention has shifted to the virtual variety. And more specifically to-do lists you can access and sync to any device, any time, on the bus, or in a meeting. Being device agnostic is the key here, you can't rely on being in front of your laptop when you need to add to your list.

This week Microsoft officially became an option to consider for iPhone users out there, offering their OneNote application free temporarily in the App Store. In this post I round up some of the best virtual To-Do task managers out there:

Microsoft OneNote

You probably already have OneNote hiding in your Office Suite and blissfully ignore it (I only just discovered a use for InfoPath). Well it's a surprisingly unheralded win for Microsoft, offering the ability to record to-dos in addition to collecting notes, clippings and images, in a central destination that can be synced to the cloud. It shares a lot of similarities to the popular Evernote (without the cool image-to-text features).

Pros:

• Desktop User Experience: add notes on the fly, tabbing to add more, in a scrapbook-style paradigm with some useful grouping and selection tools hidden in there.
• Access on the move: Access from Windows 7, iPhone and via a web browser. No love for the Android users though.
• Got Office? You're ready to go.

Cons:

• iPhone App: The first release is buggy, already a 2.5 star rating, with many experiencing login issues. There is talk of a patch coming soon.
• iPhone App Limited Functionality: They've taken away some key features from the iPhone that I'd consider must-haves such as being able to color your to-do categories.
• Features: Microsoft still apply what is a far too feature-bloated 2010 desktop toolbar 'ribbon' for OneNote. Far too many features to filter through to make this app workflow quick.
• Too Slow: Note taking needs to be fast and simple. The load and sync times on the iPhone app are too long to make it useful.

Remember the Milk

Remember the Milk started as an Australian (!) startup back in 2004, and has since grown a loyal following for task management. Lifehacker awarded it the best to-do list manager back in '07, does it still have the chops today? Represented by a cow logo, but with a monkey as a mascot, you get that these guys take a somewhat more animated view to this category than most. And yet still manage to produce the most accessible and flexible to-do lists in the market.

Pros:

• Submit to-do's from almost anywhere: Covering iPhone and Android devices, you can submit your to-do's from almost anywhere with comprehensive 3rd party integration including Twitter, Gmail and IM.. even SMS. Neat.
• Simple. The UI is stripped back to the bare necessities, creating a to-do is super quick and they also offer keyboard shortcuts.
• Cheap: At only $25 for a pro account for a full year how can you resist?

Cons:

• Design. This app is due for an overhaul to bring it into 2011. Having a clipart cow on your desktop all day starts to grind up against the beauty of some of the newer players such as Wipee.
• Free version. You won't get half the Pro's without the paid account, do yourself a favor and spend the 25 clams.

Behance Action Method

Action Method follows the productivity methods outlined on their blog The 99 Percent, and the book I've recommended here, Make Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky. Targeted toward the creative community, it rethinks the traditional to-do list approach, grouping to-do's into Action Steps, references or backburner items, with some neat filter options such as 'Focus' to bubble up those must-do items.

Pros:

• Design: Simple, minimal but well designed, it's a joy to use as you would expect from the Behance crew.
• Access anywhere: While not as comprehensive in the device support, you can access your list from the web app, desktop app or iPhone app, with efficient syncing between them all.
• Involve the team: Features are available to delegate tasks to different team members, a powerful option if you can convince the team to take part. And yes, even a tool to 'nag' if those tasks are being ignored.

Cons:

• Expensive: While there is a free version up to 50 tasks, you'll need to shell out $12 a month or $99 a year for the full version, which may be a little too expensive for those just entering the to-do list world.
• Screen real estate: Some may love the big bold boxes that each to-do creates, similar to that of my old 3M post-it's, but others may find this takes up far too much room than a traditional list view on their monitor.
• Backburner: This area feels underdeveloped, a dumping ground for ideas that don't fit the Action Steps, ideas seem to get lost all together in the long vertical grey list.

What else?

Well, to-do's aren't difficult to develop, so there are many options out there if you need a simple to-do for your desktop. Here's a few that are above the ordinary:

Google Tasks and ToDo for iGoogle Homepage

Ta-da : Free from the crew at 37signals

Wipee List

Todo

Todoist

Toodledo

Jott : If you prefer to voice your to-do's this service offers a dial in number, that notates and integrates with service such as Remember the Milk.

And don't write off the traditional pen and paper, post-it's or a plain text file in Notepad, if it's what it takes to help you get things done! Outlook To-Do (and the desktop To-Do for Entourage on Mac) served me well for years. Good luck!

Job: Interactive Producer at Razorfish NYC

Got the Producer chops? Then I'd like to hear from you. We at Razorfish NYC are hiring and I'm on the lookout for a rockstar (yep, I said it) to work with me on one of the world's leading brands for 18-24 yr olds. You'll get the opportunity to work on everything from mobile, to social, to video, to banners that guys want to engage in. An opportunity to shape an account, and a real opportunity to grow and learn the full gamut.

Read more about the job here and the requirements below, and if you're interested send me an email at stuff@pixelpaddock.com with your resume and cover letter explaining why you want the role.

Required Skills/Knowledge/Experience:

• Solid understanding of project management methodology including the ability to identify and resolve issues, manage risk, develop detailed project plans and specifications, perform resource allocations and run internal team meetings
• Recent experience successfully managing projects end-to-end (budgets, scheduling, etc.)
• Strong interpersonal, leadership, analytical, problem solving, and organizational skills
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Experience with IAB standards and high volume publisher specifications
• Ability to work on multiple projects simultaneously
• Experience with rich media publishing tools, e.g. Eyeblaster, PointRoll, Atlas Rich Media
• Solid knowledge of interactive advertising space, including direct response and brand campaigns, banners, rich media, and micro-sites, and the delivery of non-page-based solutions with heavy creative/user experience components
• Strong grasp of the ad banner production process (e.g. banner resizing, QA, and tagging)
• Strong Microsoft Project skills
• Facility with common interactive tools and techniques (Flash, AJAX, Silverlight, HTML/CSS, .NET or PHP, database design/development, etc.); some facility with Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign is a plus
• Bachelor’s degree required
• At least 2-4 years related work experience
• At least 2 years of project management experience, preferably in a consulting or agency environment, and with an advertising focus

Estimating iOS and Android App projects: The devil in the design

If you're planning your first iPhone or Android app project, pay close attention to the Design phase. At current count you'll need to generate 6 versions of your design to cover both operating systems safely.

Here's a quick rundown:

iOS: 3 Versions:

Due to the iPhone 4's superb Retina Display, your designers will now be generate two sets of designs. One at the higher resolution (iPhone 4), and one at half the resolution (iPhone 3GS and previous). There's no shortcut here, the device won't automatically scale down the high resolution to the lower resolution (although the iPhone 4 does manage to scale up lower resolution, hence still displays the older v3 applications).

If you add iPad to the equation, this is another set. Depending on the complexity of the app, make sure you consider both portrait and landscape modes, which may require some further customization.

One tip is to have your designers work in vector shapes, allowing them to export in any resolution they like. But this doesn't help when your agency sends you those fab product JPGs. So if that's not possible, have your designers start with the high resolution version, and on signoff, generate a second set from there. There's a few handy tips and Photoshop actions available on Smashing Magazine to help make this more efficient.

Android: 3 Versions:

Google do not dictate the resolution of their devices like Apple do, so get set for a dizzying array of combinations for Android. The good news is, if you generate three resolution types (two of which are very close), you'll cover approx. 97% of devices. These resolutions are:

• 320 x 480 px,
• 480 x 800 px
• 480 x 854 px

Keep up to date on the resolution numbers as they evolve at the Android Developer site. And a useful slide deck on design UI for Android here on Slideshare.

Differences between Android and iOS:

Make it your job to know both operating systems well and understand their differences. If you're an iPhone user, borrow a workers Android device. Use an app, such as Facebook, to see how they approach the different widgets and design standards. Here's a few:

Image from the article by Suzanne Ginsberg. Best of luck.

Tip: Taking effective meeting notes

Every meeting you attend should have three outputs: Notes, Actions and Backburner items. Nothing more.

Notes are important records to capture for future reference, Action imply there is a resulting action to take place following (each should have an action verb, e.g 'signoff', 'complete', 'send' and be accountable to one person). Backburner items are Actions that are important to the project, but don't need to be immediately actioned.

One addition to the Productivity arsenal this year has been the Behance Action Sheets. A pad of pre-printed sheets I take to every meeting. They break up your page into these three buckets, and include additional space for preparation and sketching.

Sure, you can build your own version of these Action Sheets, but I'm a sucker for great design, and these pads look the business.

Check them out here, they come in plenty of sizes and flavors to suit your style -

http://www.creativesoutfitter.com/Products/Action-Sheets/15

Tip: You can print a PDF version to see if this works for you by selecting 'Print Tester PDF'. If it does, do consider purchasing and supporting Behance.

Tip: Printing multiple calendar months in Google

Amazingly Google Calendar doesn't offer an option to print multiple months. This is especially painful if you want to share a calendar with a client, or internal stakeholder as a PDF or printout.

However, there is a workaround thanks to Jekssa in the Google Calendar Forums:

1. Open Calendar in Firefox.
2. Select Print on the first month you want to print.
3. Select Save As..
4. In the Downloads popup, right click on the PDF file generated and select "Copy Download Link".
5. Past the link into a new browser tab.
6. Where it says dates=20090726%2F20090905 (or whatever single month you printed) go ahead and change the second set of numbers to whichever you want your last date to be using the yearmonthday format (ex:20100101%2F20101231 for January-December, 2010)

Tada. If you've done this correctly it will create a new PDF with the month range selected.

Gold Award January 2011: Box.net

Each month I'm offering the illustrious, sacred, Pixel Paddock Gold Award to services, people and stuff that rise above the pack and provide outstanding service to the Interactive Producer world.

Without further ado, the January Gold Award goes to.. drumroll.. Box.net.

What is Box.net?

At it's heart Box.net is a file sharing service. Set up a Box.net account, and from the account you can upload any file (think: PDF's, PSD's, Movie Files) up to 2GB in size (read: huge files). You can then decide to share it (or a folder of files) in several ways, including providing a preview link, a direct link, or password protected links. Add to this custom branded pages and beefed up security, and you have yourself a replacement for all those bad experiences you've had coding HTML extranets, diving into FTP's or dealing with amateur hour over at YouSendIt.

Why is it worthy of a Pixel Paddock Gold Award?

Your clients will love you for it. They can preview a Powerpoint deck in browser, without the need for Powerpoint. They can download past presentations, files and source code from a single project folder. It's fast, reliable and secure, you can upload that presentation as your just about to walk in the clients door. And you can make it your own, brand the URL, and with a call to their sales staff, customize the look and feel (minor gripe: they really should make this free).

Props to Walton Isaacson who first showed me Box.net.

You can try a free Personal account at:

https://www.box.net/signup/personal

For business use you'll be paying $45 p/month (Minimum of 3 users at $15 p/month).

What is wrong with Project Management

James Leal is worthy of a spot on the Shopping Channel with his website 'Project Management Templates'. Offering 100+ templates 'you can be proud of' for not $297.. not $149.. but $99..! Buy now and get an additional 38 templates.. Money back guaranteed!

This is what's wrong with Project Management. Too many people start with a set of cookie cutter documents, lay these over the top of a project, and call it a process. It makes a PM come across as process-driven and organized. It also keeps them busy. But it adds very little to a project.

More time needs to be spent by PM's and Producers on first understanding the project, the stakeholders, the requirements and then creating the right documents for the audiences they serve. And only the minimum level of documentation. So less time is spent managing documents, and more time managing projects.