I volunteered to help deliver Together London’s Agile Content Conf at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, and worked with a brilliant group of people behind the scenes. Here are some notes around the points made that resonated most with me:
1. Perfect is futile
Lisa Scott, Product Manager, GDS, made a point which resonated most with me, the quest for perfection. She said a drawn out process to perfect content or user experience was a waste of time. The approach she went through at GOV.UK was to publish early and respond quickly to feedback.
How many times have we sat in endless approval loops until something is deemed ‘perfect’? Lisa’s point is user needs might continue to evolve and content/online service needs to keep adjusting.
It’s our job to educate stakeholders that content/websites aren’t ever ‘finished’ or ‘perfect’ for the rest of time or a fixed three-year budget cycle.
Education is something Amy Wagner mentioned at the recent Agile Content MeetUp when she discussed facing down different character types. You know, the people who need content by a deadline for no reason other than to save face or working with someone who just “knows” the solution without any real evidence. Sometimes it’s helpful just knowing that these “types” are to be found across all organisations.
2. Post-It notes aren’t the best agile tool
3M must be praying at the Shrine of Agile, given the boost to Post-It sales. But Lisa Scott said that working out the ‘snake of user needs’ using Post-Its caused a number of problems, especially when they fell off the wall and got walked out of the room on someone’s shoe.
This is why they built a tool to keep them together — the Needotron — which helped them assign formats to needs and prioritise them. You can see the open source code here.
I think we should all have a Needotron in our lives.
3. User needs aren’t equal
Lisa reminded us that nearly all users come to your website for just a few things. You can’t treat all the user needs equally, as it wouldn’t make sense. Also, user needs can’t always be met by just publishing content.
Another bit which got me nearly shouting approval out loud was when Lisa said processes do not solve problems, but multi-disciplinary teams do. Oh yes. I am converted on that completely. Processes don’t make happy teams and, as Lisa pointed out, happy teams are productive teams.
4. Start reacting
Thum Yee Mun gave a wonderful talk about moving from agency world to a start up selling prescription eyewear.
She said the two worlds were very different, from client-led to user-led and from campaign-based to KPI-based.
She went though her experiences of agile content, “Our website said ‘Shop our S/S 2014 collection’. Users asked us if we were Nazis. We couldn’t understand how they didn’t know it meant spring/summer.”
One of the most valuable things in her presentation was when she told us to stop being thermometers, just measuring the temperature of the environment around ourselves, being static and collecting data.
She urged us to be thermostats and start reacting to the environment, being agile and using data.
5. Pair up for better content
Audun Rundberg said content wasn’t where pedantry should sit above everything. Instead we should ask ourselves what questions we expect to be answered on the page and then ask where they are answered. This matters much more than typos.
Better web writing isn’t printing off a website and getting excited with a red pen, editing and sending out unannounced. We need to think of ourselves as writing to meet a need (and not your boss’ ideas of what is right or wrong) and feedback is vital.
Pair writing gives quick feedback and helps you question the content from the user perspective. It might slow down the initial draft but will be better focused and speed up the overall process. Collaboration means swift iterations and transparent conversations.
It would be interesting for me, as a generalist, to pair with a specialist. It would stop the edit rounds and help the specialist understand why getting the content right isn’t just about factual accuracy. It would help them understand the value of user needs too.
6. Collaboration makes you better at your job
Jessica Wittebort, designer at MOJDigital, went back to the roots of agile. She said that no approach gives a seamless delivery and urged for teams to give empower people to pick their own tasks to increase motivation and productivity.
It made me gulp a little when Jessica said: “The more I do agile, the more I realise there is no perfect way to do it.
“Multi-disciplinary teams make you better at your job as you understand others’ constraints.”
I urge you to watch Jessica’s talk…
7. Specialists don’t rule the world
Chris Massey talked about coaching people to create better content. He went through his experience of getting the devs blogging, something I also have experience of.
He said the barriers were channels, motivations, skills and confidence, which I related to. He advocated active listening, where you wait for the other person to stop talking so you can say what you want to say. This helped him match up what he thought was blocking people from writing with how they really felt.
I will take this away and use. I think I would benefit from active listening and allowing people to express in their own time what their barriers are.
One of the things Chris said really hit home and that was the value of the specialist versus the generalist. He said generalists were really valuable to a multi-disciplinary team.
This was great to hear as generalists, in my experience, are often overlooked in favour of specialists. It makes sense that a generalist helps knit everyone together in a multi-disciplinary team.
When I got home, I mapped out my own hybrid skill set…
8. The agile content bootcamp
My favourite part of the day was facilitating a workshop with 10 attendees.
We were given a future world mega tech new product which we had to keep secret. We had to write as many user stories as we could for the product. Another group stepped over to our user stories and voted on the one they most identified with using stickers. They were not allowed to see the product details.
We selected the user story with the most votes, divided into pairs and started writing a title and first paragraph for landing page copy. We read them out and chose the best bits to form our collaborative draft.
Another group viewed our draft and stuck on it Post-Its detailing what they felt the mystery product offered in terms of benefits and their concerns.
We rewrote the copy taking this user feedback into account and shared with the rest of the audience with a big reveal of the product.
The exercise used everything we’d heard about in the day and agile processes. In our group of 10 we’d come up with landing page content which had considered user stories and received user feedback. All that in just one hour and a bit!
9. Support your audiences
I’ve been to quite a few events recently but the Agile Content Conf is the first event I’ve been to which has a behaviour policy to help speakers and the audience discuss ideas, problems and solutions within a safe environment free from intimidation and harassment.
The event works hard to help those who are attending on their own to meet like-minded others and network.
One of my roles was to help people collect a full set of trading cards which you can see above. The cards had an agile term on one side and an explanation example on the other side. Swapping cards with others started conversations and introduced people rather than leaving them occupying dark corners on their own.
The care taken to look after the audience really struck me. It can be very difficult for some to network or share their thoughts if they feel they will be made to feel unworthy.
More of this sort of thing across the event circuit ^^^
Originally published at 100and40.tumblr.com on February 3, 2015.
