Growing

Thought pieces and guidance on how to use incremental improvement to build a team’s superpowers. Inspect and adapt approaches to being better every day.

The theory is, that if you’re not growing, you’re probably dying, and in agency project delivery, our focus should always be on how to run each client project more smoothly and successful than the one before.

There are 26 posts filed in Growing (this is page 1 of 6).

The Compound Effect of Starting Projects Well

Act One. Scene One. The Start.

“Let’s just get started. We’ll work it out as we go. Who needs a plan anyway? We’re Agile!”

We knew some stuff. We certainly had enough excitement. The roadmap would become clearer as we did the work and made progress.

Or at least that was what we assumed. But 20 years ago I was still learning my trade.

And sure enough, not far into the project things got sticky. We’d made decisions without the client. Some which would be tough to undo. But undo them we must. Time and money had been wasted.

The key learning at the time was to know as much as possible before starting. Workshopping, user research, data analysis, paper prototyping. With the client stakeholders.

Often discussions we’d be having as we went anyway, just frontloaded to ensure we all headed in the right direction as a single group.

We found that starting things well had a compound effect on the remainder of the project. A poor start was impossible to compensate for later. Aligning, understanding and agreeing could (and should) all happen before work began.

Then, the majority of projects could be focused on doing, and smaller discoveries and changes to maximise the value being created.

And that’s now a key part of the approach I take with teams. We focus on starting projects well. Aligning around the needs, and a plan, and only then getting started.

Why Agencies Can’t Quit Their Really Bad Estimates

a mountain of colourful dice

If estimating things is so hard, why don’t agencies just stop doing it?

The majority of agency leaders I know don’t like estimates much. Never accurate enough to be trusted, and usually too optimistic. If delivery teams could just be better at creating them, there would be more certainty around timelines.

Delivery teams don’t like estimates either. They take a lot of time to create, and although called ‘estimates’ they often lead to expectations about delivery dates.

So let’s just stop estimating!

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But… can we deliver it?

There is a lot of focus put on the sales process at agencies. Sell more things to more clients. Sign contracts quickly and fill in all the details later. Keep the sales function separate from the challenges of project delivery.

It can be tempting to rush through the early stages of a client relationship. Promising the world to build trust and worrying about how to deliver on those promises later.

Saying no to that project that won’t be able to start for at least 3 months is hard. Surely there’s a way to make it fit earlier?

Agencies solve sales problems early. Niche down. Clear pitch. Know your market.

You know you can sell things
You can certainly schedule them in
You’ll plan what needs doing, and by who
You can track progress to the minute
You can even be prepared to support what you create

The big question is… can you deliver it?

Getting a great outcome for the team, the client and your bottom line.

Agile Principles & Your Agency: How to Live and Love Them

Text on what. "What works for your agency over Agile Frameworks"

Many agencies aspire to be Agile. Stories fly around social media about the successes of software teams who implemented an Agile Framework and immediately began reaping the rewards.

But Agile was created solely by men working in product organisations (or product-led organisations) that built software. They didn’t have agencies in mind when they coined the principles and values. They weren’t considering Agile as a way to delivery things other than software.

Agencies are not product-led organisations. They are project-led organisations. They have complexity and unknowns, where product-led organisations often have focus and clarity.

That doesn’t stop agencies valuing agility. And agencies can implement much of what it means to be Agile. But it does realistically stop off-the-shelf implementation of an existing Agile Frameworks (such as Scrum).

So if existing Frameworks can’t shortcut an agency to agility, how do we begin our journey, and what should we value when looking for better ways of working?

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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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