assembling a web team
| Although it's the last topic covered in this book, many would argue it's the most important. The team you assemble to create a web site will determine what you can do, and how well and how fast you do it. It's probably true in any industry, but it's certainly true on the web: You're only as good as your team. Ask Andrew Anker, a partner with August Capital, who focuses on Internet-related investments. When considering a company for their portfolio, they put people first. "Absolutely, the number one thing we look at is the team," Anker said. "We, as a partnership, bet on people. We think you need to have someone who's passionate about the product, someone who wakes up in the middle of the night worried that it doesn't look good." And this passion should extend not only to the management team of the company (or the lead on a project) but through every person you hire. Ideally, you want to find people who are not only talented in their own discipline, but who can think broadly about the site and its goals. "The better people you can get on your team, the better the site will be," said Mark Hurst, founder of consulting firm Creative Good. "So it's important to build out that team the right way. Don't bring someone on the team unless they're passionate about the user experience, holistically." And if people can make a web company, they can also break it. The wrong people or simply the wrong chemistry between team members can cripple a project. "Hiring bad people is the number one mistake companies make," Anker explained. But it's also unavoidable. As a company gets started, they often have to ramp up quickly, he said, hiring 10 or 15 key people as fast as they can. "When you make 10 or 15 hires, you're probably going to get one or two wrong," he said. "That happens. That's life. The best manager in the world is going to get one or two wrong out of 10 or 15 people especially when you're also trying to build a business and find real estate and lawyers and everything else." In those cases, the best thing to do is admit you made a mistake. "Realize that you've hired the wrong person, and make the change," Anker said. building the right teamThe key to building a strong team is balance. You have to assemble a team that possesses among them all the necessary skills to design and build your site. But the size and composition of a web team will vary considerably depending on the task at hand. If you're taking your small business online, you might just work alone or with a single consultant and use a web host like Big Step to handle your technical needs. But if you're launching a full-featured web site, you're going to need a full staff, including design, production, and technical roles. There's a lot of ambiguity about roles and titles on a web team. Much of this confusion stems from the way web companies evolved. Some like my alma mater, HotWired evolved from media companies. Others, like the Microsoft Network, evolved from software companies. Others from ad agencies, business consultancies, retail firms, and specific industries like real estate or even photo development. Each company borrowed terms from its own industry to define the roles on the web team, and each struggled with its own unique roadblocks in mapping their old systems on to the web. But over time, a consistent approach evolved. While companies in different sectors still use different names to describe roles, and while many roles are still shaped to fit the skills of a specific employee, there's enough consistency in the industry to create a model for building web teams. the core teamDifferent projects demand different permutations of the web team. But the core needs of a site any site are fairly predictable. The core roles on the web team:
producer (a.k.a. product manager, project manager, project lead) At the core of every web team is the producer or project manager, who's responsible for defining project direction. The producer must be an excellent communicator and a synthesizer of information. She has to weigh all the different factors technical, visual, financial, creative that will make her site succeed and collaboratively guide the team down the best path.
There's a lot of ambiguity about roles and titles on the web team. Each company borrowed terms from its own industry. To arrive at the best decisions, the producer should know when and how to put research to work for her. She should have a sense of who the audience is and how they'll use the site, and she should know how to learn more about both. She should be intimate enough with the site that she can develop theories on how to improve it but responsible enough in her methods to know how to test ideas, rather than simply follow hunches. The producer isn't necessarily a formal manager of others on the team; often, she's the first among equals. She's usually the "tie breaker" in disputes that others on the team can't resolve. As such, she must often mediate between the needs of the end user and the financial needs of the business (considering also the needs of her staff). At Wired, I would tell producers that their job was to mediate between the twin gods of user and advertiser angry, capricious gods at that! To fulfill this diplomatic task, it's important that the producer learn to speak the languages of her team members. She need not be an expert in engineering or design, but she should be comfortable in technical conversations and know when to ask questions. In addition to this conceptual and diplomatic work, the producer has to handle tactical issues, such as keeping the budget, setting and hitting deadlines, maintaining documentation, and calling team meetings. She is usually expected to bring the doughnuts. In some cases especially on smaller projects the producer may double as one of the other core roles.
technical lead (a.k.a. lead engineer, IT lead.) The technical lead provides technological leadership for the site, which begins with the question of scope. He'll work with the core team to determine just what the site will do. The technical lead should have a strong grasp on the state of web technologies, so he can advise the team about what's possible. He should be able to explain to the rest of the team how feasible certain ideas are and whether they should be accomplished by purchasing available tools or building applications from scratch. The technical lead should also be able to address back-end needs: What infrastructure will be needed to support the site? Should you invest in new servers, lease more bandwidth, change databases? Once direction's been determined, the technical lead usually designs the technical architecture of any site applications, or manages the engineer who does. He also manages the teams of software, database, and network engineers for the project, and oversees at least in part the QA team. design lead (a.k.a. creative director, creative lead, designer.) The design lead is responsible for the visual presentation of the site. But the design process begins long before colors or fonts are chosen. Web design begins with site organization (which may be described as information architecture or experience design, or both, depending on the project), and the design lead should be comfortable with the task. A well-designed web site should be both functional and visually expressive. And while most designers will lean in one direction or the other, the best designers can combine both qualities. So the design lead must have a grasp on usability issues. (Is this site functional? Can visitors accomplish their goals?) as well as the less measurable but perhaps equally important principles of visual design. (What impression does this give about our company? How does it feel to use this site?) Depending on the size of the site and company, the design lead may do all the work himself or may oversee other specialists, including usability experts, graphic artists, photo editors, animators, and multimedia experts, such as Flash designers. production lead (a.k.a. production manager, HTML lead) The web production manager oversees the physical creation of the site. This work begins with infrastructure: She'll map out the site's directory structure and set up the servers on which development will be done (the development server or staging server) and prepare the live site. She'll organize a templating system to ensure consistency across the site's pages. She'll work with the design and technical leads (if they exist) to make decisions about site structure and determine how certain visual and technical features will be accomplished. In setting these standards, she must also consider such issues as site speed, accessibility, and compatibility across web browsers and platforms. The production lead oversees the teams producing the actual pages and ensures the quality of the HTML or ASP code created, as well as all the images and multimedia elements. In some organizations, the production or HTML lead may be more junior than the other members of the core team, and they may report to either the design or technical lead, instead of the producer. domain specialist Depending on the scope and type of site, other core roles may be added, bringing in key specialist skills. For instance, content-based sites will always have an editor within the core team. Commerce sites will have an expert in merchandising or marketing. the extended teamDepending on the size and scope of a project and the skills of the core employees any number of specialists may be brought in to round out the team. Some specialists may join the team full-time, others may be called in for a specific task or short-term consulting. Often, a single team member may play several of these specialist roles. A single designer, for instance, may replace all the design specialists, or the technical lead may double as the software engineer. Some of the roles on an extended web team:
information architects These designers specialize in the organizational structure of a site. They're adept at organizing and categorizing large sets of information or tasks so that users can both grasp the scope of the site and quickly find what they need. Information Architects are usually logical thinkers able to impose a sensible hierarchy on shapeless data and skilled wordsmiths, able to categorize and effectively label site areas. interaction designers These designers specialize in creating a coherent user experience, especially when the site involves a multi-step process (like a stock-trading application or a shopping cart) or an open-ended sensory experience (like games or interactive exhibits). Interaction (or "experience") designers tend to think in terms of pacing and have a deeper understanding of time-based media and multi-sensory input (sound, video) than other design specialists.
usability (or user experience) experts Usability experts focus on the user's ability to interact with the site, identifying those areas that may trip users up. However, any usability expert will tell you that usability research must begin before the site is designed. Usability begins with an understanding of who the users are and what they want from your site. So many UE experts will push you (or help you) to conduct customer research and answer critical questions before the site's designed. visual designers translate your site's underlying functionality into a visual interface. They design the navigation elements and all the related buttons and toolbars. They're skilled at expressing the essential and abstract nature of a brand through visual elements, such as colors, type, and imagery. They usually design company logos, as well as other site elements, and they can work closely with marketing specialists to both articulate and then express the brand identity. graphic artists Artists create the illustrations, logos, cartoons, graphic headlines, and simple animations needed for your site. Many but not all designers are also graphic artists. photo editors These editors locate and produce the desired images for your site by assigning photographers, searching archives, or negotiating with image banks. media production specialists These specialists convert various media forms images, audio, video, animation into formats that are usable on a web page. Different specialists may focus on particular types of media (audio, say) or even specific technologies (like Flash). Within a company, this role is often played by the HTML coders. html or asp coders Coders create the actual web pages for your site. Although the basics of HTML can be learned in a day, it takes some time to develop the expertise to implement complicated designs. ASP is a step more complicated than HTML and requires light programming skills. For this reason, ASP coders often report into the engineering department, rather than "creative" or "design." software engineers (programmers) Programmers create or customize applications for your site. The specific skills needed depend on the application you're building: Some must be written in a particular programming language, like Java or C++. Others require specific knowledge of databases or content management systems. An experienced engineer can learn new programming languages with relative ease, but if you're hiring a consultant, you don't want to pay for their learning curve. qa engineers (or testers) Testers specialize in testing completed software or sites for problems or errors that weren't anticipated. The QA (or quality assurance) program usually involves running many different scenarios to test the durability of the application under different conditions and uses. system administrators These administrators manage all the computers and networks for a company, including the web servers that host the company web site and the mail servers, which schedule and send emails to members. Systems administrators usually handle a wide range of tasks, which may include setting up new computers and accounts for individuals, wiring cables and phone systems, installing and maintaining new system-level software, administering UNIX systems, and configuring printing and mail systems. data analysts Data analysts specialize in extracting meaningful information from the morass of data that a site collects, usually pertaining to the use of the web site. This data may deal with traffic patterns, purchase patterns, or other key metrics to the business. copywriters Writers craft the text that appears on your site. Words play a fundamental role in how a user experiences your site, and a skilled wordsmith will translate your site's identity into a verbal style. Good web writers know, however, that less is more. Web sites don't need elegant prose. They need clear labels and pithy blurbs that express meaning in as few words as possible. copyeditors These editors do a lot more than dot i's and cross t's. In a web environment, copyeditors ensure proper spelling, usage, and style all of which contribute to a site that appears precise and professional. Editors will usually develop a "style" for the site, which dictates how certain words or phrases should be addressed: How will dates be written? What gets capitalized? Does email have a hyphen? These issues may seem small, but they significantly affect the overall coherence of your site. community specialists These team members understand how to foster an online community whether it's through message boards, user reviews, mailing lists, online chat, or less direct methods, such as incorporating user feedback. Different specialists have different areas of expertise, depending on the type of communities they've worked with: real-time or delayed, visual or verbal, topic-specific or free-form. community moderators Moderators hold leadership roles within specific online communities, keeping conversations focused and behavior acceptable. They're basically the hosts of the party, setting the tone of the environment and making sure everyone's looked after. If you have discussion areas on your site, you must have moderators whether they're volunteers or paid employees. merchandisers Merchandisers specialize in placing, combining and displaying products in a way that fosters increased sales. In the web environment, they may choose which products to promote on a site's front door or through targeted emails. They may also choose which products to bundle together or which to recommend when a customer views a similar item. advertising sales managers These team members sell advertising space on the site. Depending on the type of site, sales managers may work with large-scale media buyers, who represent many corporate clients, with the corporate clients themselves, with smaller businesses making smaller-scaled buys, or with a combination of the above. marketing managers Marketing managers specialize in promoting the site or the company. In web companies, the expertise of marketing managers will vary. Some may focus on traditional areas of marketing: advertising across media, generating press interest, planning events. others may specialize in online marketing techniques: online ads, email marketing, or the development of other programs. Still other marketing managers may focus on market research or even product development. In some companies, there may be significant overlap between the role of the producers and marketing managers. business development managers These managers specialize in establishing new partnerships between your site or company and others. Business development is charged with drumming up new business but also with exploring new business directions. |
EAN: 2147483647
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