COL-LA-BO-RA-TE.
In my first post I told how Havas Digital impressed me. I have to say that this feeling is growing everyday.
Because everyday we start with a 20 mn « Daily Scrum » meeting. The objective is, for each participant, to describe the main tasks (s)he achieved the day before, and the tasks (s)he will work on today. Every team member is aligned on all aspects of the project. For each task, (s)he identifies blockers, past or to come, that the producer tries to solve immediately. I’m still so surpised to see how a 20mn meeting can solve so many issues and blockers and how every team mates response. I can sense all team members so involved and how they try to help the other members to make the project going on. I realize that the best way to achive your own objectives is to help others to achieve theirs.
Sometimes scrums can also take the form of unexpected-last-minutes stand ups. They can take place around high tables (so convenient and totally adapted to conversation, as if you were in a bar with friends !). The fact that you don’t sit in a comfy chair makes you think fast and get to the point. Lead techs, visual designers, ux designers, producers are all gathered on the same open space : last-minute meetings can be set in a second, end everybody is always available to collaborate.
Yes, it is a question of collaboration. Here, imagining and building a digital product is a question of collaboration. Every team member is involved in a global design process that can’t work without global collaboration. There’s something that, to me, embodies perfectly this form of collaboration. Every screen or wireframe we create is pined on the wall. So that everybody, at every moment of the day, can see it as they walk through the office and can be deeply impregnated, think about it, stimulated to have new ideas or insights. So simple (it costs a few paper sheets and pins) but so efficient and productive.
Collaboration is also highly present in features and contents prioritization. What can we deploy and when, according to the product objectives roadmap? What will users need and what will we adress them all along the product lifecycle? All that is harshly discussed all together AND with our client.
Everything is harshly planned and well organised. Every deliverables are high quality deliverables, neat and direct, free from useless litterature (ah french people!). A lot are made with inDesign and they really look like magazines or professional books! I realize that it is compulsory to invest time in hi-fi deliverables, even if they are dedicated to an internal exclusive use. It constantly raises the agency requirement level.
All along the project i’m working on, we never burn steps and never do compromises, that is for internal or client concerns.Things have to be done as they have to be done and when they have to be done, always in a positive mood. We don’t start design before downhill Ux is secured, and we don’t start downhill Ux before user research is achieved.
One other thing is very surprising here at Havas. You never here a phone ring. You never receive 2876 emails per hour that are supposed to inform you about the project you’re working on and the tasks that have to be done. No. Because of simple, free, collaborative and so useful tools. We use Basecamp to share files, to discuss references w’ve seen the web or on the app store, we start conversations about features or ideas, we assigned tasks or set up events… For real time communication, we use Slack that is so comvenient, so simple and powerful at the same time. It works like a text messenger that you can chunk in customized channels, and it’s user-friendly!
So now,I deeply feel that if we mix our french expertise and all I learned here at Havas, we can achieve something big.
