Brainstorming workflow in Web Design without knowledge of agile, scrum or any other jargon

My first look at workflow management for agencies and freelancers in Web Design. The following was written before I studied agile and other project management methods, thus provides outside the box thinking but also means some advice should be taken with a pinch of salt…

This is is part 1 of 3 on the titled subject, and I thought a nice intro would be an article I wrote as part of designing and developing a fictional web-magazine page for my masters course in Web Design and Content Management. So for the full monty experience of this content or just be amazed by my beginner web skills do visit it (wish I knew about 45–75 character limit per line back then — sorry).

I predict a brainstorm…

I will consider workflow problems freelance designers and whole agencies repeatedly find themselves dealing with and have become a common issue in the Web design industry as a whole. I want to make emphasis on general management of the activities agencies or freelancers conduct, which in itself will include a take on creating workflows, be it for responsive design adaptation or data driven website building. I hope this article will result in a brainstorm of ideas to solve those issues and problems, which are prevalent in the web design industry.

Ethan Marcotte changed the way people think about designing websites for the new reality of multiple devices of multiple sizes. In 2010 he did not introduce a brand new idea of Responsive Web Design but he did provide a refreshed perspective on it, and it was his logic for how Responsive Web Design should be done, which won overall recognition in the industry. His logic predicted the direction in which web designing as a whole would go. It was not direct single solutions or methods that he advocated (correctly), there were plenty arguments for use of media queries and fluid design already, it was the concept that people were doing things wrong and that’s why it all seemed as becoming hard and unmanageable to design in the world with ever increasing browsers, devices and screen sizes. “But that kind of design thinking doesn’t need to be our default” phrase from A List Apart highlights how Marcotte put emphasis on changing the thinking process rather than advocating concrete single solutions.

I can only attempt do the same. There is not a single solution advocated here, more of a different perspective provided to help a freelance web designer or whole agency. In the end one might summarise that the article has brought about no new knowledge, just a change in how to view things but that is the intended goal.

So what are the issues…

Any regular reader of “Net Magazine” will be aware of the monthly column “clients from hell” which itself has a worryingly huge popularity as an entity in its own right at www.clientsfromhell.net. It serves as “a collection of anonymously contributed client horror stories from designers”. This popularity speaks volumes, not necessarily about the issues or problems that those in the web industry face but more about the fact that there are lots of them of all varieties when it comes to relationship with clients. I mentioned ‘worryingly’ as such popularity tells me there is a systematic failure of the relationship between client and web designer/developer. What’s more, is that for every horror story about a client, there is a horror story about a web designer, web developer or web agency. I am lucky enough to have been on both sides of such horror stories, as before I dived into web design I was on the other side paying freelance designers than going through several web design agencies myself, trying to kick-start a web-based business. Keeping it short I changed web design agencies more than twice and now prefer to outsource work to several freelancers at the same time due to having adequate knowledge to manage my own team of designers/developers. An entrepreneur side of me says those were common business obstacles I had to overcome and web agencies’ failure to meet my needs is just another proof “that nobody will take better care of your website or business than yourself”. A web designer side of me however now recognises where it went wrong with each one of those agencies, and reasons for eventual breakdown of my relationship with them, i.e. the relationship failure I mentioned earlier. Having analysed one common issue it nicely leads us into another and what I will call failure of Digital Project Management. I am well aware of many products out there designed to help businesses keep themselves organised and manage customer relations and projects, the likes of Slack, InSightly and Asana keep popping up like mushrooms, nearly every year there is yet another review of the best project management tools. This is easily explained: there is a huge demand from everyone including web agencies to help establish workflow and manage operations in efficient and effective way. Project managers in web agencies complain about burn out and being squeezed on both sides: the developers and designer on one side and customers, current and potential on the other. They have to manage customer expectations and quite often oversell in order to gain client business and then deal with developers and designers who often may not be capable to satisfy those expectations within a set time scale. Project managers get stick from everyone, as highlighted in “Net Magazine” issue:264 article “Project Managers Are Badass”. Rachel Gertz hits the nail on the head when she states “Your DPM are precious. But they’re often set up for failure”. In other words, current way of doing things across the board in most cases leads to failure at some point, and the whole “industry is begging for a change”. Apart from contributing to relationship failure between customer and yourself, inadequate digital project management leads to other problems such as destruction of employees’ morale (demotivation at work, depression), poor team culture (due to work friction, proper open communication between employees is never established and benefits of harmonised work from whole team integration are never observed) and many others. All this in the long term eventually leads to business failure be it of a web agency or individual freelance activities. Just think how long it will be till members of your team start looking for other places, or customers leaving for another agency, or your freelance colleague winding down activities with yourself, it will not matter that others are suffering the same issues and problems, to an individual it will run down to needing a change and “the grass is always greener on the other side”.

So what do you do…

One unique project — one unique everything. By this I mean not just a unique approach to each client, or a tailored approach to each project, I mean a total reorganisation of everything: workflows, tasks allocations, team structuring, everything! It requires total abandonment of any preconceived or established ways to operate, and build applicable new way every single time per your project, per client, per your agency in the current time, (i.e. what your agency consists of now in terms of human and other resources, its current obligations and abilities).

Please hold on with me for a second here, before you say this is impossible or simply chaotic and one would always require at least a basic set of conventions on conducting activities in order to operate and move forward. What may seem chaotic and disorganised, will lead one to learn and adopt, cause web agencies and freelancers to innovate. In an industry which commends innovation, there is very little innovation in how things are operated and managed. Web agencies tend to work in the same ideological manner as if they were some other agency in any other industry, difference being they are just a little bit faster to adopt new technologies. Freelancers tend to adopt tried and tested methods to organise themselves and work with clients on the basis, which seem to be set by anyone and anything but their own initiative. This is the reason why so many freelancers find it difficult to allocate hours per client and plan ahead, also why its difficult to communicate to customers why 12 hours of work may take more than a week to complete. The problem is people trying to work in old paradigms in the industry which is already ahead of such work structuring and task management.

Taking such an approach will inevitably lead to greater creativity. Lately people started talking about creativity element slowly being evaporated from web design in general. Jeffrey Zeldman explains that as web designers are trying to be compliant with web standards the boundaries are pushed less and less, and while learning all aspects of web development and design is good for a “jack of all trades” it may not be so good for overall creativity. In a web design agency having a team reorganised consistently with each new project, will allow each team member utilise their skills set to the maximum and work NOT at the same expected level, but experiment and push forward.

Such an approach will lead to greater more diversified communication within any team. So communication will not be limited to be predominantly having to be conducted through Project Manager all the time, but in certain conditions may change between whom and how it is conducted. For example, a client may be a fairly experienced individual and thus able to communicate with web developers more directly, which in turn dependent on context means less “communication clutter” and more efficient use of human resources. If the unique nature of the project/client allows for an opportunity, than not jumping at that opportunity because “that’s not the way we do things” seems like an unnecessary cost.

Another major benefit of taking such a perspective is increased Antifragility, it is a concept developed by Professor Nassim Nicholas Taleb, which refers to systems that increase in capability, resilience, or robustness as a result of mistakes, faults, attacks, or failures. Web industry itself is very fast and constantly changing, one might say that what was done just 18 months ago is already out of fashion, or not appropriate or even wrong. Just think how fast SEO rules changes, and how quickly mobile friendly design changed direction of design. This is an industry in which those who are antifragile will always come on top as they benefit from constant changes and big disruptions in the market/industry.

The fact that big web agencies already constantly outsource parts of work to freelancers around the world is in part a sign, that naturally web design agencies drift towards such an approach anyway but perhaps need a confidence push to adopt it across the board.

Such approach may only look messy now, but that is because we are trying to define and order it in our minds using old paradigms. That is just like the ‘print medium’ design thinking used to force us think in old limited ways and thus constrained web designers and complicated the transition to responsive design. So just like with responsive design, we had to drop the shackles of print design we need to do the same in the constantly evolving web industry and drop old way of managing, recognise that web design is unique and thus managing activities within it should be unique. Even if my approach of unique project — unique everything is faulty, its implementation will help learn something new about your web agency or yourself as a freelancer, about your strengths and weaknesses and identify opportunities and threats. At the least, I hope my mumbling on about it may have sparked an idea in your head and I look forward to hearing about it.