On this Independence Day weekend we remember the struggles of our forefathers (and mothers), the separation from Britain and the Declaration of Independence that brought it.

Ok, let's be honest...we really spend the days thinking about grilling, fireworks, getting in on the big sales or getting away somewhere interesting. Me, I'll be spending the time off trying out my new inflatable kiddie pool with canopy and sprinkler (I won't actually be in the pool, the kids will of course).

But, on the topic of independence, I’ve recently been reading about the Customer and Project Team’s Bill of Rights in the book ‘Software Project Survival Guide’, by Steve McConnell. He introduces this idea by comparing a poorly run software project to 17th century life under mob rule. This experience can be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and hardly ever short enough.” In order for a software project to survive, all parties need to agree to treat each other in a civilized way. These rules of civilization he summarizes first in the Customer’s Bill of Rights:

CUSTOMER'S BILL OF RIGHTS
I have the right:
1. To set objectives for the project and have them followed
2. To know how long the software project will take and how much it will cost
3. To decide which features are in and which are out of the software
4. To make reasonable changes to requirements throughout the course of the project and to know the costs of making those changes
5. To know the project's status clearly and confidently
6. To be apprised regularly of risks that could affect cost, schedule, or quality, and to be provided with options for addressing potential problems
7. To have ready access to project deliverables throughout the project

But, this is a two-way street. On a software project, customers must pay for their rights by respecting the project team's rights, which he lists below:

PROJECT TEAM’S BILL OF RIGHTS
I have the right:
1. To know the project objectives and to clarify priorities.
2. To know in detail what product I'm supposed to build and to clarify the product definition if it is unclear.
3. To have ready access to the customer, manager, marketer, or other person responsible for making decisions about the software's functionality.
4. To work each phase of the project in a technically responsible way, especially to not be forced to start coding too early in the project.
5. To approve effort and schedule estimates for any work that I will be asked to perform, This includes the right to provide only the kinds of cost and schedule estimates that are theoretically possible at each stage of the project; to take the time needed to create meaningful estimates; and to revise estimates whenever the project's requirements change.
6. To have my project's status reported accurately to customers and upper management.
7. To work in a productive environment free from frequent interruptions and distractions, especially during critical parts of the project.

I would love to see a project kickoff meeting where all parties gather around a large table to read through the Bill of Rights document together and clients, managers, senior management, project team all take their turn to sign the document. This will affirm their commitment to upholding their responsibilities (although it seems to be mainly the responsibility of the project manager to make sure all of these rights are upheld). Who knows, maybe some project teams out there go through that exact process, or maybe this could be included as a part of the project charter. It’s an interesting idea, but at the very basic level I agree with the author that everything listed here is extremely important for the happiness of the client and project team, and the health and success of the project. I hope to find a way to incorporate this into my projects going forward, so if you’re my client or on my team, better keep a quill handy!

Some of us marketers are in the unique position of being both an avid user of social networks and marketers trying to tap into and leverage their communities for our own personal gain or that of our clients'. So while I understand and even support, as a marketer, efforts by social networks and third parties (advertisers) to monitor my activities and interests and market to them, the avid user in me can't help but feel a little uneasy at "Big Brother" looking over my shoulder.

As marketers, we sometimes forget the personal attachment people have to their profiles and how protective they can be of their online identities. Some live vicariously through them and others see them as an online representation or extension of themselves. I think social networks understood that, which is why they were so reluctant initially to monetize their sites. As a user, I appreciated that. As a marketer, I was of course endlessly frusterated. And yet even post monetization, I haven't experienced what I would consider to be an invasion of privacy or the sense that I was being exploited (I was excluded from Facebook's Beacon program, thankfully).

That's perhaps why I was so interested in the announcement by Seth Goldstein, founder of San Francisco-based SocialMedia Networks, of "social banners" or display ads that turn you or your close friends into the hook of marketing message. The patent-pending algorithm basically looks at how you interact with friends through social media applications and identifies those you are closest to and hopefully those you are most likely to listen to (advocates). It then finds a way to work those individuals into ads served to you. Borrowing heavily from Google, the algorithm is called "FriendRank" and Goldstein and company are betting wisely that it will increase the level of engagement with ads, namely click-through rates. According to some preliminary numbers and tests with Unilever and Universal Pictures, SocialMedia Network reports that people are 200 times more likely to respond to social ads than non-social ads. Those are some prettly startling numbers. The marketer in me is practically salvating. Have we come that much closer to finding the magic bullet in social media?!

The avid user in me though, feels uneasy. Are they exploiting my relationships and status as purveyor of all things cool for their own personal gain? Are they volunteering me as an advocate for a brand or product unknowingly and without my permission? And if so, do those recommendations I made unwillingly affect my status, especially if they prove wrong? Will I be deemed less relevant by my peers? The fact that Goldstein has said publically that programs like Beacon are the future of this type of conversational marketing doesn't exactly ease my fears. I agree with him, but perhaps Beacon isn't the best example. The company has stressed that they will be sensitive to people's privacy and will allow people to easily opt-out of the program if they have any concerns. Then again, Beacon allowed you to opt-out as well. The problem was, people were angry because they had never explicitly opted in.

I believe the key to this all though is striking a balance between the need for privacy for some and relevancy for all. If they can accomplish that, they will have something extraordinary. And if anyone can make this work, it's Goldstein in my opinion. The man's a genuis. Both the marketer and the user in me are anxious to see what unfolds.

                                                                                                                             

Part II: The call

The Web Production Associate position entails a lot of time answering phone calls from administrators who use UJC Web.  10-12 candidates are selected from the application process for the phone screening round.

A phone screening checklist is used to follow up with the candidates on some general topics as you might expect in any interview. What are your career goals? What interests you about this position? One of my personal favorites is the question : What three words would you use to describe your work ethic? This often will stump candidates and we get some very interesting responses. (So if you are a candidate reading my blog as part of your pre-interview research, be ready for that question ;)

We also focus very specific questions related to the three core areas of the job: HTML/CSS, Quality Assurance, and Tech Support/Customer Service.  The questions are designed to verify information provided during the application process and to determine how the candidate will handle situations on the phone that they will inevitably face in this role. 

Specifics are important, for example during the HTML phase of the questioning, my co-interviewer and lead trainer, Deanna Ishikawa, PMP, gets very detailed in her review of a candidates website example. She probes them on how and why they used tableless CSS or if they used javascript for navigation, why did they do that.  It is important to have a capable expert like Deanna on the call. 

While it makes sure we are getting a qualified candidate, this kind of questioning re-iterates how serious we are about filling the job with the right person to all the candidates and in a way helps us build the Flightpath brand in the eyes of the potential hire.  It also gives candidates a sense for the kind of accountability they will face if they take the job.

The candidates who make it through the phone interview round are typically good enough to be hired and we have the luxury of hiring on some fine distinctions among candidates who are very capable rather than having only one good candidate from a series of 4 or 5 face to face interviews.

Next up Part III: The Show and the Pudding …. Check back next week.

 

We just recently completed the launch of a feature rich and highly complex calendar system for our largest client, United Jewish Communities. The project accomplished a number of technical and functional goals, and was also our largest of the year (well, it was the largest project for my client and since I only pay attention to what my client does, it might have actually been the largest of the year).  But, this post is not specifically about the project, but the new processes we introduced into this project lifecycle that I think have proven extremely beneficial to project team, client and end users.

Functionality Review Sessions – In an effort to improve our quality assurance and involve more of our QA team before the development completes and moves onto the testing site, we held functionality review meetings that involved the Project Manager (me), the Director of Technology, the programming team and a member of the QA team. This was in addition to the regular status meetings, and the goal of these meetings was to review the functionality developed to date and confirm that it met the requirements and worked properly with the other parts of the system. Each programmer would demonstrate what he/she had worked on and issues would be detected early at a stage when they would be more easily corrected.

This idea of the cost of early vs. late detection is demonstrated very well by this graph created by Contrux software.

(More on this concept in another post).

BETA Sites & Launch – About a month before the launch to the live websites, we went into BETA mode (not new to many in the software world, but something our group has wanted to do for a while). We created mirror versions of the 160+ websites that are using our CMS and calendar, and gave them a place where they could try out the new functionality and view their events in the new calendar system. This accomplished two goals:

• It gave the users time to become comfortable with the new system before it was ‘thrown’ upon them. One of the most challenging things about the tool that we develop for United Jewish Communities is that it needs to be user friendly to both the tech savvy and the tech un-savvy at the same time. In our last large release, there was criticism from the field that we did not give the users an opportunity to try out the new system before it was thrust upon them. We took that criticism seriously and wanted to make some changes.
  
  
• It opened up the new work to several hundred more pairs of eyes, giving us and them more of an ability to catch defects that could be specific to one website or one specific arrangement, system, etc.

Training – we also conducted web & phone training sessions for over one hundred users, spread out over 8 sessions. The users were able to train on their own BETA sites and could ask questions early and address any concerns before the launch to the live sites took place. This was also a great forum to share ideas about how to make best use of the new calendar functionality.

All of this did a great deal to improve our quality assurance and control processes and the client and end-user acceptance of the product.

Did the project launch 100% bug-free?

Not exactly. I mean, let’s be realistic here. This is the world of software after all.

Did we have any real show-stopping issues when we launched, either delaying the launch or making for rough sailing for the post launch days and weeks?

Not really. There have been bugs that both our team and the end users have found since launch that were not detected before, but we have been handling them carefully and efficiently and the system has remained stable throughout this process.

Do we have happy customers?

I think so, there seems to be a good feeling in general and we're starting to see some nice creative use of the new system and good ideas going around for how to make the best of the new tool.

I’m happy and relieved that the project has launched and completed smoothly, and excited about the progress that was made both technologically and in various project management process areas. I look forward to continuing to incorporate these processes and finding new ones that will make future projects even more successful.

The Human Factors Blog  mentioned the release of a special edition of Computers in Human Behavior that featured an article around Thinking Style Impacts on Web Search Strategies. 

This has always been an interesting topic for me, and reading this article reminded me of my favorite example to describe how people think and use websites:

Imagine that you are going to the supermarket to buy your weekly groceries.  How do you find what you are looking for?   In general there are 3 different thinking styles and thus 3 types of ways we go about finding what we need when shopping in the local supermarket:

 

1.  Pasta is on my list.  Take me Straight to the Pasta and Sauces aisle!:  She knows exactly what she is here for and wants to go directly to where to find it.  She will walk passed the Produce and Dairy aisles and will pay not attention to Brangelina’s latest baby news on the magazine rack.  Translation: The search bar user.  This user wants to quickly and easily find what they want without a lot of work on their part.  Smart searches help this user – she doesn’t have to worry about typos and can just let the system do the work for her. 

 

2. The Hunt-And-Peck aisle browser:  He has a general idea of what he needs.  Sure, Pasta and Sauce are on his list but he would like to roam and browse the aisles to see what other items the supermarket has to offer.  On his way to the pasta and sauce aisle he walks up and down each aisle.  He wonders what else may he discover and pick up along the way.  “I didn’t know that this supermarket also offered a whole line of organic yogurts and cheeses!  Come to think of it I am in the mood for some Aged Gouda.”   Translation:  The browser.  This type of user generally will use browse functions peruse what is on your site and eventually find what they are looking for.  Use browse technology that is efficient but also allows the user to make discoveries of what else your site contains while they browse.

and last but not least…

3. The Aisle Sign Reader.  This user knows that she is looking for Past and Sauce but takes the time to orient herself to her local supermarket’s layout to methodically find what she is looking  for.  She reads the tag above each aisle until she finds what she wants.  Translation: The navigation user.  This person will orient themselves to your site’s navigation and look through your hierarchy to find what they want.   Efficient and logical navigational structures point these users in the right direction while giving them an opportunity to learn more about what your company has to offer.

No single method of finding information is better than any other.  They simply point to the different ways people think.  So in my life-long quest to encourage good design,  I urge you all:  Do not be afraid of giving your users more than one way of getting to the data they are looking for!  Love your Take Me Straight To Pasta! users, your hunt-and-peck aisle browsing users, and your aisle-sign-readers. 

Try to target the needs of all 3 types of users in your designs by giving them all more than one method to find what they are looking.  Make it easier for each and they will feel at home on your site and subtly more comfortable with your brand!

While we're on the subject of politics... Obama and his campaign have found yet another way to harness the power of the internet. PR-challenged companies take note! The campaign recently launched http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/fightthesmearshome/, a site dedicated to dispelling untrue rumors circling him and his campaign that he feels could be damaging. Historically candidates have largely ignored rumors, hoping that they would eventually go away. For some (John Kerry anyone?) that proved to be especially costly.

And by creating a site, he's using the exact same method to dispel rumors as is often used to start and propagate them, the internet. Web 2.0, as outdated as the term already is, has created a world where even the smallest of rumors can quickly spread like wildfire and take on a life of their own. Look at the Jeremiah Wright scandal. What quietly started out as a few videos making the rounds on YouTube was quickly picked up by the major news stations only to become THE controversy of the Democratic Primary.

Here, Obama is hoping to prevent a swift-boating by attacking the rumors head on and in a public forum. A pretty shrewd move considering the fact that he's often considered stronger on the offensive than he is on the defensive AND that there are a number of rumors circulating on the internet that could prove to be damaging to his campaign.

Besides making a clear distinction between the lies and the truths, the site also gives you the ability to easily "spread the word" to friends. It even allows you to import contacts from your address book (you can choose from the following: yahoo.com, aol.com, hotmail.com, gmail.com, msn.com, lycos.com, mac.com, and fastmail.fm).

By highlighting the rumors, Obama does run the risk of perpetuating them and giving them credence, but assuming he does a good enough job on the site of dispelling them, the risk is marginal. The consequences of not are far more dire.

The question now is, can companies somehow leverage this approach to control their public image, and if so, how? And furthermore, can Obama succeed? Given his campaign's track record so far, I'd have to say, "Yes he can".

Visit Barack Obama’s home page this week and you’ll find respectful appeals to Hillary Clinton’s supporters, news, videos, inspirational quotes, and a variety of effective calls to action.  Take a look at John McCain’s homepage and you’ll see (amongst other things) a well-placed promotion for McCain golf gear.  Really.  

This kind of comparison should help explain why I predict that Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States. 

The Obama web team also does a great job of spreading the message all around the web. As the module on his blog page says, Obama is “Everywhere.”  There are readily accessible links to Obama connections and content on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, Twitter, Eventful, LinkedIn, Blackplanet, Faithbase, Eons, Glee, MiGente, MyBatanga, AsianAve, and DNC Partybuilder. At Johnmccain.com if you dig deep enough, you’ll find links associated with myspace, facebook, and youtube. 

Click through to McCain's Myspace page and you’ll find that he has a respectable count of 53, 218 friends.  Obama, on the other hand, has 391,834 – and his myspace page – typically some of the crappiest looking pages on the web, even looks well-designed and, dare I say, presidential.    (For a good laugh, take a look at some of the 62 "friends" on Bush's MySpace page.)

Kudos to the Obama team for recognizing how times have changed and for mastering the use of interactive channels for the good of their cause.

- Jon Fox

This is a response to the previous post, titled "My neighbor the saleswoman".  As I am the saleswoman and my neighbor is one our wonderful project managers.

Typically, sales people usually sit in their own area as we are frequently on the phone, loud, …most of you know how we work.   Here at Flightpath, we have a different office layout and I sit only a few feet away from a couple of our project managers.

It’s interesting sitting near them, because they can hear me answering questions from potential clients and existing clients about budget and timeframes, before I’ve even spoken to them (the people doing the work) about the project.  I can completely understand why they have fear in their eyes as to what I may be promising to close new business, but, my job is essentially to bring in business and bring it in now!   

I always call it “doing the dance”…I have to dance around 100% committing to the clients budget and timeframes, but, keeping them interested in doing business with us. And on the other side, I have to dance around letting our staff know that we have a really exciting project potentially coming our way, but, it has to be done tomorrow!   

The good news is that most of the time clients and prospects are reasonable with project deliverables and budget.  And, most of the time, I am able to set reasonable expectations with the clients and internally.  But, when a client/prospect says to me, it has to be done by this date, or we won’t get the business!, you better believe I’ll be dancing my way over to their desks to set their expectations that we are going to have to throw our schedule out the window and get this done.

We have had some crazy requests come in from clients and our team does everything in their power to deliver on time and on budget!  

It sounds like I’m selling right now…well maybe, just in case…

Intro: A new hiring process is born  

In his book GOOD TO GREAT, Jim Collins writes about the importance of getting “the right people on the bus.”  At Flightpath, we have a critical entry level role that serves more or less as our draft for quality team players. We have taken care to build a process that goes beyond the traditional resume and face to face interview paradigm.
 
The real inspiration for this new process came from within our own staff.  About a year ago, while helping me interview some candidates for an open position one of my colleagues, Deanna Ishikawa, PMP, suggested we should start testing candidates on their HTML skills.  I remember being tested for jobs in my own past and I really appreciated it because it added credibility to the process. Here is an example of a company that does some real tough testing that I had been through myself: (http://capitalone.com/)
 
Since we are small company, hiring decisions are so critical to our success.  We also recognize that we are competing for raw talent and the interview process is really a two way process. We are being researched by potential employees and we will be compared by them against other companies.
 
This three part blog entry is about the process we are perfecting with each new hire. I am proud of the new hires we have made and I am confident they will contribute for years to come as Flightpath grows into a World Class Organization.

My sincere belief is that candidates will remember the Flightpath interview process and recognize that we care about our work, we have fun while remaining professional, and we offer great opportunity. This innovative interview process which makes candidates feel good about demonstrating their skills is a critical component of Flightpath’s future success because it will yield the right kind of people for the bus Jim Collins talks about in GOOD TO GREAT.  

Part I: The Job Application is Back!   

Our new website has helped with recruiting because the site is elegant, sophisticated and it communicates who we are very well.  The new site, unlike its predecessor, has job descriptions in a prominent career section. Since the new site has been launched this past spring, many candidates have commented on how much influence the website had on their decision making process when choosing to apply for a new job.

In order to show how serious we take the role, rather than accept resumes, we require an application which can be found on our website careers section that includes some basic skills tests and a personality typing test that generates a Myers-Briggs personality result.  This application helps answer a few key questions for us:     

   1. Can the candidate follow instructions (which are deliberately vague in some cases, to see how they respond)?
   2. Can the candidate do the basic HTML and CSS work that will be required in this position?
   3. Will the candidate be able to do quality assurance work that is required in this role?
   4. Is the candidate a good personality fit for dealing with angry or confused clients over the phone?

Candidates who take the time to complete the application distinguish themselves immediately from the candidates who choose not to take the time and effort to demonstrate their skill set by just sending in a resume. This is an improvement in the initial pool of candidates because we know at a minimum they are go-getters who are not bashful about doing work to demonstrate their value.

On the flip side of marketing ourselves to the candidates who are applying for multiple jobs, the application process shows how serious we are about the position we are trying to fill. We make it clear that we are looking for a Smart Action-Oriented Creative Knowledgeable person. In order to further differentiate the opportunity we offer, we explain in the application that there is a training period and a career track(including salary review timelines) for this role.

By having a sophisticated application that tests their skill we are following our internal motto of “Trust but verify.”  We are saying to the potential hire, “we are serious about our work here, if you can do the work; you have a chance to join our team and succeed.”

This process also eliminates weaker candidates from the process assuring that those who make it to the next step are quality candidates. This eliminates unnecessary work winnowing stacks of resumes or worse, meeting with candidates who can not do the work despite what their resumes may say.  By including key staff people in the evaluation application process, ownership of the hire is expanded. Current team members who participate in the process gain confidence in the ultimate hiring decision. In other words, no one will say, “why the heck did they hire this person?”

Next up Part II: The Call … Check back next week.

I don't exactly have a corner office. We just recently moved to a new space and I sit at a window along a row of desks at the western side of the room. Our arrangement along the western side is nice and intimate, and I have the pleasure of being just a couple feet away from a very nice woman who is also our most senior salesperson. Because we sit so close to each other, I've also had the opportunity of listening in on some of her sales calls. This has been both entertaining, exciting, and sometimes totally frightening. Just last week I overheard a call with a potential new client and was not only glad I was sitting down, but happy my lunch had already digested. Here's why:

She said (not exact quotes, but hopefully enough to get the idea), "Yes, we can definitely set you up with a new website, we just completed a project for another client in the same field as yours, took about 8 weeks to turn around so will probably be the same for you."

I cringed, and I thought "What??! How can we make any estimate of schedule when we have absolutely no idea what the project will entail or what technologies we will be using, what specific needs they will have, etc. We aren't even approaching the beginning of the Cone of Uncertainty, so to make any kind of estimate at this stage is complete project suicide!"

Then she said, "We used a new Content Management System (CMS) to integrate the content of our other client's old site to new, and I'm sure we'll be able to help you in the same way."

I glared at her and almost grabbed the phone out of her hand, and thought "Wait!! We don't know enough to make a commitment to this person about using a new CMS for their site! There are still too many unknowns and a good deal of risk associated with using this technology. The best we can do is offer to research the idea and go back to them with an analysis of the benefits and risks of venturing into the project with this new CMS, and make sure it's clear with the impact on schedule and budget would be if we hit any complications."

Then she said "I understand that you're on a tight schedule, we'll corral our people and make sure we can get this out the door by August 1"

My heart skipped a beat as I thought, "How can you make any promises of schedule when you don't know what the availability of our resources are, people's vacation schedules, our key production person is out this week, etc."

Then I realized why I'm not a salesperson. A salesperson has to be a "can do" person all of the time, because she is going to bring in our next deal and she's going to make sure there's plenty of dollars around for my next bonus (that's just a hint there for someone, you know who you are). So, it's her job to raise the energy level and get this potential new client excited about the prospect of working with us, whatever that might mean. And, she's good at it, too. She's brought in a lot of new projects in her time here.

As a project manager, it's my job to make sure the new work that's brought in is done well, on schedule, within budget, and meets the client's needs. Is it possible to reach all of those goals in every project? That's the subject of many other posts, but it's definitely the goal we strive for at Flightpath. But, a project manager also sometimes needs to be a "can't do" person. A PM needs to be a leader and keep the team energized, organized and informed, but also attuned to the reality of the tasks we are undertaking and the risks involved, the uncertainties at each stage of the project and it's affect on schedule, etc. When a project is done well and the client is happy, the saleswoman's job is easier because the client will ask us to do more work.

So, for a minute I imagine what the sales call might go like if I was doing the pitch:

"Well, we did do a somewhat similar project in the past with another client, but without taking a closer look at your site and the technologies that run it, I couldn't even make a ballpark estimate of time that it would take to complete the project. Let me call a meeting with our programmers and look through your site and we'll get back to you in a few days."

"click!"

Ok, so I don't think we're going to get that deal.

The reality is that many times we are challenged with urgent scheduling demands, new technologies that we might not be familiar with or uncertainties of scope, details, etc. The advantage of being at smaller company is that it's possible to shift resources around to get the work done, even when some of the details don't get ironed out until later on. Working with a new technology can be a daunting task sometimes, but can also be very exciting and challenging, and bring us higher up on the escalator of risk.

So, I'm going to continue to do my job and she will continue to do hers. I'll continue to be entertained by her sales calls and know that together we'll keep things busy at Flightpath.