| Managing a web team raises many of the same issues as managing any other group. People are people, after all. And they bring the same insecurities, incompatibilities, petty jealousies, and poor communication to web projects as they do to any other. But a web site throws certain aspects of management into high relief. You have to assemble a multi-disciplinary team, combining individuals with a wide range of technical, visual, editorial, and business skills. These team members who speak very different languages have to learn to communicate and collaborate with each other. And they often have to navigate a minefield of office politics, because the web site affects the entire organization and everyone (it seems) has a stake in their work. No wonder, then, that management issues were the number-one challenge web veterans say they faced, in the course of creating successful sites. No matter whether the person was an engineer or an animator, a producer or a production specialist people and politics were the main roadblocks to success. "Corporate politics and corporate culture are the biggest problems I have to deal with," says Jesse James Garrett, an information architect and partner with Adaptive Path consulting. "Bigger than any information architecture problem, bigger than any design problem, bigger than any technology problem." 5 key challenges for web managers: Assembling a multi-disciplinary team Getting everyone on board Encouraging collaboration Motivating without money Avoiding burn-out
assembling a multi-disciplinary team Although a small site can be built by a single person, most web sites require people from different backgrounds technical, visual, editorial, financial to bring their skills to the table. It's a challenge to assemble such a multi-disciplinary team: Simply finding good people is hard enough, but defining their roles and getting them to play well together is a full-time job. "You have to try to teach people to understand how each other's minds work, and respect that, and realize that if any part of it were missing, the site would fail," said Margaret Gould-Stewart, former VP of Media & Community Development for Tripod. "If there weren't talented sales people, you'd be out of business. If there weren't talented developers, you'd be out of business." "We've all been a part of projects that were too strong on one side and too weak on the other," she said. "And it just never works, in the long run." An effective web team is small, but balanced with different disciplines given a equal voice at the table. "When one department or discipline has too much power, you have problems," agreed Luke Knowland, principal of LGK Productions. "Web development done right is so interdisciplinary. Everyone has to be responsible and accountable to each other." See assembling a web team, p. 332, and structuring your web team, p. 338. getting everyone on board Web projects are almost always political. It takes special skills to get an entire team not to mention an entire organization working toward the same goals. "You end up being quite a diplomat," Garrett says. "I sometimes feel like Colin Powell doing a tour of the Middle East. You go around to [the company's stakeholders], and you cajole and you wheedle and you make little deals, and you try to convince everybody that they're getting what they want, even when that's not the case." See how to get everyone on board, p. 341. encouraging collaboration Web sites require people from different disciplines to work well together. But they usually need some help getting there. From the seating plan to the structure of teams, there's a lot you can do to encourage good work. One of the best ways to improve understanding is to show team members what the other really does. "I spent a lot of time helping people build a better understanding of what the other side was about," said Margaret Gould-Stewart. "I would send designers on sales calls so they would see what the sales people had to do what hoops they had to jump through. There's nothing like going on a sales call to understand what sales is about." On the flip side, she also tried to impress on the sales staff why usability mattered. "We'd bring sales people to usability tests," she said. "They'd watch users try to complete tasks with products that had been designed by committee, and over and over again not be able to complete them." lesson from the trenches: how to speak the language(s) When you took your job, you may not have known you needed a phrasebook. Not just one, actually, but several. For collaborative web teams join people from different disciplines, who think differently, work differently, and speak utterly different languages. It falls to the producer to translate. "It's important to understand who your audience is and communicate in a way that's meaningful to that audience," said Margaret Gould-Stewart. "You may need to get a salesperson and a designer the same information, but it needs to be delivered in a totally different way." "All these people have their own way of thinking about the problem," explains Jesse James Garrett, an information architect whose work often makes him the middleman. "So you have to learn to say the same thing in different ways to an engineer and the VP of marketing. The languages required there are mutually exclusive: The terms that work for an engineer are absolutely not going to work for the VP of Marketing and vice versa." If you're going to motivate or persuade them, he says, you have to make sure you're speaking the right language: No easy task. After all, the concepts and strategies you're discussing are often difficult to grasp on their own. "How do you explain an already ambiguous and complicated concept to people who approach the world in totally, totally, totally different ways?" asks Martha Brockenbrough. For managers, it can feel like translating Ulysses to Chinese when it's hard enough to explain in English. "What it takes is an understanding of how different people understand things," Brockenbrough says. "You have to create good metaphors, good models. You have to know enough about the different disciplines so you can talk to people. You have to build a bridge between different types of minds." As Gould-Stewart says, "It took time to gain fluency in different areas, but it was time well-spent." |
motivating without money In some industries, motivation is a numbers game: Pay people well, and they'll perform. Not so on the web, where managers often exert only indirect influence over the people working on the site. What motivates people besides money? "A lot of times it's just gratitude," says Kristin Windbigler, former Executive Producer of Webmonkey. "People just want to be thanked. And a little gratitude goes a long way." "Web development can be a lot like the movie Saving Private Ryan. In the end, they saved Private Ryan. But the team's all dead and Private Ryan is lost." Jim Morris Avoiding burn-out Unrealistic deadlines, outsized egos, and over-inflated expectations are hardly unique to the web, but they sure are common. In an atmosphere of high hopes, rapid development, and long hours, it's easy to push your staff too far. "Web development can be a lot like the movie, Saving Private Ryan," said software engineer Jim Morris. "In the end, they saved Private Ryan. But the team's all dead and Private Ryan is lost." Similarly, you may succeed against all odds, launching a web site that no one said could be done only to find you've burned out your staff to launch a misguided site. To avoid a Private Ryan situation, always remember to ask yourself: Is what I'm trying to do realistic? Is it worth it? "The art of choosing men is not nearly so difficult as the art of enabling those one has chosen to attain their full worth." Napoleon Bonaparte Emperor of France lesson from the trenches: how to encourage collaboration  "I believe in collaboration that proximity is everything." Margaret Gould-Stewart  "The team needs to know who has input into decisions, who makes the decisions, and who's the tie-breaker." Wendy Owen The challenge of web management can be summed up in one word: Collaboration. More than anything, a web producer must know how to bring together people of drastically different backgrounds and get them to work together toward a common goal. No easy task, you say? Well, we agree. But a few good ideas can go a long way toward building the bridges you need. Be truly open to ideas. It's not enough to say a project is collaborative, you have to mean it. "You have to become genuinely willing in your own mind to receive other people's input," says Janice Fraser. "Often people go through the motions of collaboration, and it doesn't work because it's not genuine. If you really don't care what other people have to say, they'll figure that out. And it'll show. So you've got to change your own mind set first." Include key people early in the process. True collaboration requires people of different disciplines to be involved from the beginning, when goals are being set and direction determined. Everything flows from those initial ideas, and a person brought in later will never feel a full partner in the process. Clarify roles and the decision-making process. Although it's helpful to break out of narrowly defined roles, it's still essential to define who does what. "The structure needs to be laid out from the beginning," says Wendy Owen, a partner in Giant Ant Design. "The team needs to know who has input into the decisions, who makes the decisions, and who's the tie breaker: the person who makes the final call if team members can't agree." Work in small groups. Although there's a definite time and place for large teams, smaller is better when it comes to collaborative work. A small team allows individuals to build personal relationships, and establish a work style that suits them. "Tight teams work best," says Wendy Owen. "When too many people are involved, the process gets too complicated." Change the seating plan. Most offices divide employees by department, rather than project. So the engineers sit in one section, design in another, and marketing in another still. "That is always a mistake," says Taylor, an interaction designer. "When people don't sit next to each other, they don't talk to each other, or go out for coffee together or collaborate well." "I believe in collaboration that proximity is everything," agrees Margaret Gould-Stewart, former VP of Creative for Tripod. "You can work really hard and do an okay job working together from a distance. But face time is a critical part of the creative process. Your relationship outside of the project totally affects your ability to communicate." Be open to multiple directions. Collaboration is difficult when team members come to the table with rigid ideas about the end product. To build something truly collaborative, you must be receptive to new ideas. "The key to leaving yourself open to possibilities is starting with a wider pool from the beginning," says Wendy Owen. "So you come up with three design directions at the beginning, and then evolve from there. You're so much more open to change than you would be if you only explored one direction." Learn how to brainstorm. Brainstorming is a great way to generate ideas and enthusiasm for a project or rather, it should be. "There are probably three people in the world who know how to run a brainstorming session," says software engineer Jim Morris. "It's so hard to be an unbiased collector of good ideas." (See how to run a brainstorming session, p. 326.) Dig Deeper how to work with engineers, p. 236
Solicit opinions one-on-one. Group meetings are an important part of collaborative process, but they're not the only way. "The best way to get ideas out of people is to sit down one-on-one and talk to them," says Janice Fraser, a partner at Adaptive Path. "If you genuinely care about what they have to say, and you sit down, and you look them in the eye, and you listen, and you write down what they're saying, they're going to tell you a lot more." Showcase good work. If one of your collaborative teams has done a great job, reward them with public praise. Mention their work at a company meeting, highlighting the role of cross-disciplinary collaboration. Better yet, ask the team to make a short presentation as a team to talk about what they accomplished and how. Learn what other people do. Ignorance is probably the biggest organizational barrier to collaboration: It's hard to value another person's role when you don't understand it. "You should try to learn as much as you can about what your co-workers do," says Kristin Windbigler , former executive producer of Webmonkey. "You should at least know what they need from you to do their job well. But always keep in mind that you aren't the expert." Draw people out. One way to encourage collaboration is to draw individuals out. Sometimes a star player will hang back because she's uncertain of her role or her strengths. Take her aside, and tell her that she counts. "It's very effective to let people know that you think they're special, and that you admire them and their talent, and you're excited to learn from them," says Martha Brockenbrough. Recognize your biases. Many if not most companies have a significant bias toward one discipline over another. As interaction designer Taylor puts it, "One group gets favored based on what the boss used to do, or what the boss sees as important." That's bad news for the web site. "A web project can go astray if the team is too beholden to any one department," says Peter Merholz. "A web site needs to reflect on the company as a whole. When one department steers it, it will reflect poorly or at least improperly on the other departments." Hold team meetings and serve food. No one likes meetings, but they're essential for collaboration. If teams don't meet regularly, they never learn to work as a team. "A lot of times, unfortunately, disparate groups only come together in times of crisis," says Margaret Gould-Stewart. "Something big comes up, something's wrong, and all of a sudden the engineers are meeting with the designers, or the sales people are meeting with the product manager. So instead of being proactive, you're constantly in crisis mode." A spoonful of sugar or a powdered doughnut always helps the medicine of meetings go down. So serve food. People come together more easily when they're sharing a delicious meal, or even a nice snack. But beware of those doughnuts! The sugary rush is fleeting, and will leave your team deflated. Know when to make changes. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, a team just won't gel. The individuals may have different work styles or may just lack the right chemistry as a group. In these cases, don't be afraid to make changes. "You can't keep investing in a team that's never going to be able to function correctly," says Greg Dotson. "Sometimes teams just don't work." "Everyone has the right and duty to influence decision making and to understand the results. [But] participative management is not democratic. Having a say is not the same as having a vote." Max DePree
Former CEO, Herman Miller
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