Friday, April 23, 2010
Matthew and I had a great meeting with Greg Segall and Paula Katkin at One Pica's beatiful new office space in downtown Boston last week. One Pica is one of the top Boston-based web agencies, and it was great to show them what we're doing with EditMe and get their candid feedback. Since both Matthew and I came from a similarly sized agency, we were keenly sympathetic to the challenges in codifying, standardizing, measuring and improving process in a services business that provides the most value when they are being creative and unique. So, how do you codify uniqueness?
Unlike a typical product company, agencies are always working on something different. What works for one project may not work for the next, and typically you find that a given project works well with some specific process you vaguely recall from nine months ago. Adding complexity, each department in an agency needs to own and improve their own processes around their subject matter expertise, while also ensuring the teams work together seamlessly to deliver a superior product and client experience.
It's easy to think that all agencies follow essentially the same process. At the macro level, this is true to some extent. But there are really two things that differentiate one agency from another. First is the people. The quality of people in terms of talent, passion and commitment is extremely important. But the subtleties of the process unique to an agency, and how well that process is integrated into project delivery, is the secret sauce that separates the truly excellent agencies from the so-so players. It was clear that One Pica "gets it."
Here are four tactics agencies can use when attempting to codify, implement and improve their process.
It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the tool used to manage and improve process has to actually execute that process. This line of thinking is the downfall of most process initiatives. As much as we might like it to be the case, there will never be one master tool that successfully manages every aspect of a project. Rather, many tools will come into play. They don't all need to be in bed together - they just need to connect at key points as defined by the process.
By separating the tool used to manage the process from the many tools used to execute the process, the best tool for each job can be cherry picked, and tools can easily be swapped in and out without having to rewrite the process. In other words, your process should not be married to tools, and should be flexible in allowing tools to come and go as they naturally will.
This is the primary reason a wiki is the perfect tool to codify, implement and improve process. It does just enough to get the job done efficiently without trying to own the execution from end to end. Think of your process wiki as a guide book - a thin layer on top of your daily project work that codifies best practices and puts them together into a unified process. In other words, it's the text book, not the work book.
The Type A personalities that are usually found at the top of successful agencies will instinctively dive in and attempt to boil down all project work into a single set of steps. While there is a need for this at some level, it's important to regularly step back and ask whether the level of detail is the right fit. If your process is starting to look like a massive nested programming statement, it's probably too detailed. If it's just a bunch of unrelated best practices, it's probably not detailed enough.
The best way to find the right detail fit is to establish the high level components that may or may not be part of any given project. These components can have their own best practices and connection points with other components. For an agency, this is key because every project is different and will require different components. You'll rely on the expertise of your staff and the fact that they understand and own the overall process to get the right components into the right projects. If your process is trying to think for your staff, you're getting too detailed.
While upper management might hole up in a room to establish the first go at a process wiki, it should quickly be opened up to the team for review, comment and improvement. Process handed down from above is much less likely to be followed than process built from within. Let your art director formulate the best practices, recommended tools and overall process integration of the design phase. By doing this, you'll also find your team leads working together in new and interesting ways. And within teams, you'll find staff feeling more engaged and involved in working on their slice of the pie with their team lead.
If changes make it in that you disapprove of, express that, but make every attempt to try it out. Let a project or two run that way and see how it goes. If you can make a solid case for changing it after wards, then do so. By using post-mortems to decide what stays and what goes, everyone knows why its done the way rather than feeling quietly resentful of not getting their way. And when this happens, be sure to add this explanation to the wiki to avoid having to run the experiment again after mistakes have been forgotten.
Finally, it's important for upper management in an agency to watch carefully for patterns and themes. The small things that make your agency's process different from the other guys is what will define your competitive success. Things to look for are pockets of industry expertise, powerful tool combinations, reusable assets and unique bits of process. Define, refine and productize these gems to make them a key selling point of your organization. By doing this, your process comes full circle and provides real business value above and beyond the grind of day-to-day project work.
If you run or work at an agency, leave a comment on this post and describe the tactics you've used and lessons learned in codifying your secret process sauce?
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