Harry Bailey

Harry Bailey specialises in turning project chaos into clarity. With two decades of hands-on agency experience and agile-certified expertise, he offers practical, immediately actionable strategies, not just theory, to dramatically improve agency project delivery.

Overcoming Agency Hurdles: How to Embrace Automation

office full of people. cartoon style. Lots of computers and robots

What is automation?

Automation isn’t a modern phenomenon. People have been automating tasks for centuries. Originally this meant creating a mechanical solution to a manual task, but more recently we’re automating using software and cloud services.

What started with fishing and waterwheels is now focused on writing code to offload the work of a person to a computer.

IBM defines Automation as “the application of technology, programs, robotics, or processes to achieve outcomes with minimal human input”. Nice!

There’s a massive opportunity for agencies to remove the need for ‘human input’, allowing your people to focus on work which returns more value for clients.

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Win at Client Communication Using The CRAFT Model

woman sat at desk typing on a computer with dozens of messages flying past on both sizes

A simple communication approach that works with your clients.

They say that retaining a client is easier than winning a new one. They’re right. Much easier.

But it still takes effort.

Using a simple system reduces the burden. Ensuring your clients get a positive and consistent experience. Even across projects, teams and annual budgets.

Building strong, lasting relationships is the foundation of any long-lived, successful agency.

Agencies that thrive tend to excel at knowing and retaining their clients. They create partnerships rather than encouraging a limiting supplier status.

There are many ways to build trust and grow a strong client relationship. By far the most important is how you communicate with them.

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Using Agile with fixed scope and price client expectation projects

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Does it work at all? Let’s dig into Agile’s origins.

Fixed scope clashes violently with the flexibility so fundamental to Agile approaches.

Agile needs a different mindset than methodically working through the lines of a requirements list. The ‘delivery what we agreed’ of fixed scope, against the ‘respond to change’ of Agile.

For a moment, let’s imagine we’re a project manager. A bloody good one. One who prides themselves on our ability to solve challenging puzzles. To make complex things appear simple.

We’re face to face with a new client. This client has insisted on a fixed scope and fixed price project. They won’t budge on the expectatio. Both sided has signed the contract (or SOW) which includes this fixed scope clause.

We’ve had zero involvement up to this point. Which means we couldn’t have done anything different. So we need to work out how to pull something brilliant out of the bag.

Turning to the client, we call a short meeting break. We head to a quiet breakout room and scream into a cushion for several seconds.

Once we’ve recovered our composure, we start to wonder; Can Agile still deliver success with a fixed scope?

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Agile without a framework

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What does it even mean to do Agile?

Let’s jump right in with a very brief history of Agile. 

Agile was born in 2001. Agreed and signed off by a group of 17 white men from just 3 countries and all aged between 36 and 61.

They created and shared the Agile Manifesto at that time. The manifesto is made up of principles and values. 12 short principles and 4 short values to be exact.

It focuses on the creation of software, nothing else.

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Better Project Risk Management for Agencies

a sign on a stone wall warning of danger

What do successful projects look like? Is it about profitability? Is it about making clients happy? A proud team? Or always hitting deadlines?

Success often means the avoidance of potential failures. And failure avoidance is about surfacing and mitigating risk.

Risk to project delivery comes in many forms. Complete failure is luckily rare. Most project risks only reduce the amount of success that can be achieved, and value that can be created.

Modern agencies serve many concurrent clients. Every one is different. They come with distinct requirements and people. Every project is unique. With new outcomes and deliverables.

Risk needs consideration and review before every new project.

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