Sassenheim

I'm a novice when it comes to business trip abroad, in fact my trip to Akzo Noble on Monday (03/04/06) was my first ever.

The experience has pretty much put me off going again. The round trip began at 4am BST when I got up, breakfasted, showered etc. and drove of to Leeds Bradford Airport.

There I made the flight with seconds to spare, thanks to the slowest queue through security ever. I can't believe they are so inefficient.

The meeting was very useful with nothing to report here. It did however end at 1.30pm, meaning I got back to Schiphol at 2pm leaving with just a few hours till to departure, some 6 hours to be precise.

I couldn't check in for 4 hours as the system wasn't ready for me meaning I had 4 hours of wandering around a large shopping centre.

I check in at last leaving two hours till departure, after a nice large beer I casually wander over to the departures board. My flight is delayed. For 2 hours.

By the time I eventually board the aeroplane I've been in Schiphol for 8.5 hours. I get home at 1pm.

My day has been 21 hours long I can now answer any questions regarding Schiphol airport that you may have. I am a Schiphol trivia guru.

Why didn't I go to Amsterdam? Because I am a fool.

Coordinating projects and peoples time

Problems with our current scheduling system:

1. Time slots are booked too long time in advance
• the flexibility to respond to urgent work is lost
  
• time is bartered for, this wastes time and creates stress
  
• moral is lowered, as there appears to be no end in sight
  

Description:
Typically we know that some tasks associated with a project will happen e.g. Content audit, Sitemap, Visuals. So we can plan in advance for these.

We also know that the outcome of a meeting will be more work. But we don't always know in advance what this work will be or how long it will take. So we need to respond flexibly to short urgent deadlines.

Solution:
A balance needs to be made between long term strategic planning and short term flexibility. Easy to say, hard to implement. Perhaps only a percentage of peoples time should be booked in advance.

Consequence:
Individual planned tasks may appear to take longer to complete, though the cost will remain the same.

2. Demand appears to outstrip availability
   

Description:
Because peoples' time is booked so far in advance the demand for peoples' time outstrips availability. The high demand means that peoples time is booked in a "I'll take it because if I don't someone else will." This means that peoples time is not being used effectivley, project stages are completed in an adhoc order based on peoples availability. Most web projects should follow a fairly standard routine, where early stages influence later stages in a natural order of planning and execution.

Solution:
The responsibility and understanding of overall project processes and direction needs to be centralised. Devolving responsibility can not work when each project manager has greater responsibility for individual project success, than for the overall success of the operation.

Consequences:
Someone will have a very hard job.

3. We don't work in teams, we work as individuals
   

Description:
There is a secondary consequence of individuals time being booked on an adhoc basis, no team problem solving. Despite people working on the same project they are rarely working on the same problem. When problems have been shared the resulting solutions have been robust and well understood by everyone, individuals just can not achieve the same results.

Solution:
Plan, Plan, Plan. At the moment our plans help identify costs and overall timings, they do not accurately identify team or individual resource requirements, dependencies or risks.
Once planned book time accordingly, whilst retaining a degree of flexibility.

Consequence:
We need to produce more accurate plans. Plans need to be broke down into smaller chunks. Plans need to identify dependencies. The benefits of improved planning need to be championed, for want of a better phrase.


Conclusion:
I believe that there should be a clear distinction between project managers and account handlers, the two roles do not mix well.

Pitching, listening, learning

Meeting people has to be the bonus of this job, even in a pitch there's a chance to learn something new, hear new ideas, and get wind of people doing very interesting jobs.

Today I see tangible evidence that BIG banks really are looking into the changes that Web 2.0 will bring to their business, I'd like to be in on that please.

How will the 'social' side of the internet be drawn into insurance and banking, groups of people buying finacial products?

They could easily be geographic groups, may be home insurance could be grouped for postcodes of similar risk, too simple a model, but the ideas there.

But the web could mean no similarity in geographic location, just demographic similarity.

Groups of like minded people benefitting from community, but with out having to share a kitchen.

Is it possible, tell me it is.

Positioning

It's always fascinating to see first hand how your concerns and values are quite unique to yourself. I wish it were otherwise sometimes, but I guess it makes for a more interesting life.

I spent the morning in the company of compensation culture solicitors and their marketing and IT teams, watching as a third company pitched their claim management wares.

There's significant room for improvement in the accessibility of the claim management software, particularly as the company has spent sometime working on the public facing features of their product.

I can see a great opportunity to work with solicitors marketing team and the software developers to improve the usability of the product, if they can be persuaded of the business case.

It'll be interesting to see if I can influence the project earlier enough to make a difference.

The WaSP website has been redesigned, and is looking very good - http://webstandards.org/

PAS78 - Conference and launch event

I spent to today in London at the launch event for Publicly Available Specification 78 - Guide to Good Practice in Commissioning Accessible Websites.

All in all, an interesting day, a good range of speakers, good case studies and good ideas. The PAS has been well positioned as a guide for the people who pay for website rather than as a guide for designers and developers, there are plenty of guidelines for developers and designers already.

Two key messages I took away are:

1. When you commission a website delegate, don't abdicate responsibility.
2. The effort you make to create an accessible website should be reasonable.

Two outcomes form this conference:

1. I believe there are some distinct opportunities to help clients set their initial accessibility policies.
2. Offering clients a range of usability testing by representative groups of disabled people will be critical for a credible accessible design solution.

I did have one moment of worry during the conference... would the Tesco case study use examples of it's website circa 1999/2000, that I worked on, to illustrate VERY bad practice. Thankfully it was not to be.

Visionary Design Awards 2005

Connexions Direct has won the award for Best Website in the Young Adult category at the 2005 Visionary Design Awards.

Needless to say I'm quite proud of the efforts that we've made at Brahm to create an award winning, good looking accessible website.