Raised Eyebrow Blog

Many of the clients we have the pleasure to work with have their own groups of stakeholders that they work with on a day to day basis. Sometimes those groups are small (“It’s just me and the other Communications person here.”) and sometimes those groups are large (“Let’s see, we have a Board, a Steering Committee, a Communications & Marketing Team and a Team of Content Managers – they’re all interested in this project.”). But with so many people wanting to be involved in your project, how are you going to satisfy all of their wants and needs?

Working with large groups of people can be challenging but it doesn’t have to be tough. We have some experience with this and have developed a few techniques for our clients who have large, or multiple groups of stakeholders. The tips below include examples using a website project, but these ideas can be applied to any project you might be working on.

Tip #1: Have one point person who can be the liaison and take care of all the project documentation. This person will be the one who leads the project on your side. They should attend all the meetings and be responsible for overall communications and keeping the various stakeholders updated on the project’s progress, a Project Manager, if you will (do you like how I snuck that in?).

Tip #2: At the start of the project identify with all of the stakeholders what the goals of the project are and what your measures of success will be when the project is completed. You can do this a couple of ways: you can have a big meeting with everyone to identify the goals and formalize them, or you can have separate meetings with each of the stakeholders (or groups). You can also send an online survey to everyone (just be sure to give them a deadline date for filling it in). Whatever way you decide to gather the input here are some questions you can use to help shape the meeting agenda or survey:
1) What do you see as the overall goal for this project?
2) What do you hope this project will accomplish when it’s completed?
3) Why is this project important to the work that we do?
4) Once the project is completed how will we know whether or not it was successful?
5) What are your own measures of success for the project?

Once you start gathering all of that information you’ll likely notice some trends (“The Development Team really wants the website to help increase donations” or “Our webmaster and content managers would really like the site to be easy to update”). You may have to filter out some of the input that might not apply to the project, or might be too vague or general (“I just want a new website”), but be sure to document your high priority goals for the project and what the measures of success will be. Share the document with all of your stakeholders, this will be the document that you come back to again and again throughout the project to make sure everything is on track. (In Project Management terms, this is also known as a Project Charter, here at RE we call them Project Briefs.)

Tip #3: Next you’ll want to identify who the decision makers are: Who will have the final say on the decisions being made for the project? Does everyone in the room get a say in what the website colours should be? Who is the sign off authority? If you have more than one sign off authority, how do they make decisions amongst themselves on day to day tasks and assignments? If you get to a point in the project where the stakeholders are split on which direction to take, your decision maker/sign off authority should be able to break the tie.

Tip #4: For multiple groups of stakeholders find ways to bring them into the project when it’s appropriate and tailor a meeting specifically for them. In this case it’s helpful to identify what their interests are first. For instance the design team may be more interested in the aesthetics, “How does our logo work with the overall design?” “Has the web designer followed our Graphic Standards?” “Will this website fit with all of our other visual identity pieces, like our brochure and our business cards?” So you may want the design team to be involved at the very beginning of the design phase, then once the design is further refined bring it to your other groups of stakeholders.The Board may have a slightly different focus than the Design team they may be more concerned about the overall message. “Does this website convey the breadth of the work that we do?” “Will this website help raise our profile in the community?” “Can the website help us attract new Board members?”

After you’ve identified who all of your stakeholders are and what they’re focused on you can then use their interests to inform meeting agendas, which leads to my next tip…

Tip #5: When asking for input it’s helpful to focus the feedback by asking some specific questions, for example, if you were asking for feedback on design the questions might be:
1) Which design option do you like best, and why?
2) Which option do you like least, and why?
3) Does the design reflect the overall goals of the project? (It would be helpful here to include those goals as you identified at the project start).
If your organization has a clear purpose for the project, such as “Increase Donations” it would also help to ask a question about how the design treats that goal, like:
4) In option 1 we’ve placed the Donation button in the graphic header of the site and it’s the same colour as our logo. In option 2 we’ve changed the Donation button to the orange accent colour but have placed it at the top of the right sidebar. Which option do you think is more effective?

The nice thing about asking such specific questions is you’ll then have quantifiable data: “5 of our 7 board members really liked the orange donation button so let’s go with that option.”

Tip #6: Be realistic about the amount of time each group will need to review project progress and provide feedback. Your Board may be scattered across the country, in different time zones and will likely have busy schedules. They may need two weeks for their review whereas your Communications & Marketing Committee may be able to gather around the conference table and get their review done in an afternoon. For this piece of the puzzle it’s helpful to have a sense of how quickly each of your groups of stakeholders can get work done within their own group, then you’ll have a better idea of how long the project may take to be completed.

*As I’m sure you already know, it’s impossible to make everyone happy. But what can help is letting your stakeholders know that you’ve listened to what they’ve said, you’ve valued their opinions and you hope they’re satisfied with the compromises that have been made to complete the project. The Design team may may not be that happy with the bright orange donation button, but the Graphic Standards were all met, and the Board thinks the new website will certainly help increase donations and attract new Board members.

So it’s time to celebrate! Once the project is completed acknowledge all of the people who helped you get there; showing that appreciation can go a long way when you start your next project.

In February I had the absolute pleasure of attending the Managing Design Projects Conference organized by Adaptive Path. Scott Berkun gave the keynote and he said something that really resonated with me, “There is a lack of heroes in the project management world,” (although I do consider Scott to be a PM Hero, have you read his book, Making Things Happen?).

What he was alluding to is the fact that there are PMs working in all kinds of industries; at web design studios, at marketing firms, in healthcare, and the list goes on. In short, we’re everywhere. However non-construction-related Project Management is an emerging field, there are few role models to learn from and few resources out there for us PMs who don’t have to worry about scheduling the drywall installation after the plumbing contractors are finished. This thought was echoed  throughout the day. some of the comments I heard, “I feel like I’m working in a vacuum,” “We need a PM community,” “Learning on the job is great but I’d love to have some concrete examples or resources to learn from.”

Now, things seem to be changing. Communities are forming and expanding, more PMs are speaking up and sharing their expertise and with that in mind I wanted to share with you some of my favourite PM resources. The resources I’ve included are good if you’re a Project Manager or a Something Else who does a lot of PM work or are interested in learning more about PM. Perhaps you could become a Project Management Hero.

Here goes:
- Scott Berkun’s website, essays, blog and book. Also, if you ever have the opportunity to attend one of Scott’s speaking engagements – do it!
- PMClinic listserv, also known as Patoomba: it’s a website, it’s a listserv all with a PM focus. Each week a new situation is presented to the group and we have the chance to give our two cents on it.
- No Secret blog, the author of this blog is a regular contributor to the PMClinic list and started his own blog that’s filled with (almost) daily CCrits (sounds like “Secret” stands for “Content Critical”).
- Herding Chickens: When I was studying project management the PM assigned to teach us all about Human Resources recommended this book. It was the first PM book I read cover to cover. It’s a fantastic guidebook filled with real life examples and lots of document templates.

Ofcourse there are other PM resources out there, like the PM Hut, Project Connections and pmStudent (a site I just found out about a couple of weeks ago), but the list above has the resources I go back to regularly. What about you, do you have any PM resources that you find helpful?

As a side note, I have a certificate in Project Management from UBC but I haven’t pursued a PMP designation. If you have questions about the program I attended or about PMP, please do feel free to get in touch with me. I love chatting with other PMs about ideas and experiences and am happy to share mine.

We are very pleased to announce that Pivot Legal LLP has a brand new website, just launched today. If you don’t know anything about Pivot Legal LLP then you can start with their tagline: a different kind of lawyer, a different kind of law firm. Having worked with the lovely people at Pivot for the last few months I can confirm that they are indeed a different kind of law firm.

If you follow Vancouver news at all then you’ve probably heard about Pivot Legal Society, they do a lot of advocacy work and have been in the news from time to time, connected with issues and projects related to the Downtown Eastside. Pivot Legal LLP, a full service law firm, grew from the Society and 100% of the profits of the LLP go to the Society. Have you ever heard of a law firm that donates 100% of their profits? (For the full story, check out John’s blog post: How Pivot Legal got started.)

One of the other things that sets Pivot apart is their personal nature, which I think helps diffuse the mystery (and misconceptions) about Law and Lawyers. You can read through the bios of each of Pivot’s Lawyers and they are blogging, holding their own Events and contributing a wealth of knowledge through the Legal Resources section of the site. The website even has a Directory of Free Legal Services site visitors can search through.

This has been such a great project to work on and is a true example of the collaborative way in which we work together here at Raised Eyebrow. From the conceptualizing and planning phases though to the design and development phases we’ve all been involved with this site – and we’re adding it to the ever growing roster of sites that we’re quite proud to have worked on.

It’s been a busy year at the Raised Eyebrow HQ. To date we have worked on more than 30 different website projects and we’ve got a few more in the works. For some projects we designed, built and launched an entire website and for others we worked on the design and handed development over to someone else. Overall the projects were as varied as our clients.

We dabbled a little in the political arena and built the JustShutUpBC website. We also worked on the nomination site for Gregor Robertson (which has since been taken offline) and we built websites for Geoff Meggs and Heather Deal. Gregor, Geoff and Heather all won in the recent civic election which can only mean that having a site done by Raised Eyebrow is sort of like a good luck charm when it comes to election time ;-)

Ofcourse the big political website we worked on in ‘08 was for the BC NDP.

We also had a chance to work with a collection of musical clients. The Vancouver Recital Society got an updated look for their new season. The Vancouver Welsh Men’s Choir got a whole new site that allows site visitors to listen to their music, buy tickets to their shows and purchase their CDs online. The Chan Centre’s website was moved into Drupal and they were also given a new look for their new season.

This year we had a contingent of clients on the Educational side of things:

• The Federation of Post Secondary Educators got an updated look and we also helped reorganize their site when it was moved into Drupal.
• The BC Teachers of English Language Arts got a snazzy new site which has a really great Resource section and a dynamic Conference area.
• Economics for Everyone is primarily a book but we got to build the book’s online companion which houses further resources for educators, unionists, activists and anyone else interested in modern day capitalism.

As well we got to work on a few sites for people who do really great work to try to make this world a bit better for everyone:

• Covenant House Vancouver: an incredible organization dedicated to helping homeless youth.
• ThinkCity: they help to empower citizens to realize their dreams of having the city they want to live in.
• Citizens for Public Power: an advocacy organization working to keep the province’s power generation system in public hands.
• The Columbia Institute: they work to foster individual and organizational leadership to help nurture sustainable communities.
• Shareholder Association for Research and Education: a social enterprise that works to coordinate and implement responsible investment practices.

It’s been an absolute pleasure to work with such great clients who are doing such awesome work themselves.

We also got to launch a pet project that was waiting in the wings for some time: the RE Blog.

It’s been a fantastic – and productive – year at Raised Eyebrow. Happy Holidays everyone! All the very best to you in ‘09.

I’m the project manager at Raised Eyebrow so it’s part of my job to keep our projects organized. Organizing a team of people, multiple project schedules, budgets and clients probably seems like a daunting task. I’m hoping that through this blog, I’ll be able to share with you some of my organizational tricks but today I want to tell you about My Rainbow Inbox and how I love to colour code things.

Over the years I have developed my own formula for colour coding and I’ve found it especially helpful to colour code my inbox. My inbox is sort of like my communications command centre. I use Apple’s Mail program and I’ve installed a plugin called Mail Tags which allows me to add a project name and colour to each email message. (As an aside, Mail Tags also comes with a few extra features for people who follow the Getting Things Done approach, but I mainly use the project tags.)

My system is this:
- Larger projects are coded in the warm end of the colour wheel – reds, yellows and oranges;
- Smaller projects are cooler colours – blues, greens and purples;
- And everything related to Raised Eyebrow is pink, ofcourse.

I’ve also set up Mail filters to automatically colour code messages as I receive them, so if you work for Terrific Clients R Us and your email address is you@terrificclientsrus.com my email program will set all of the emails you send to me with your project name and colour. Easy peasy.

My other trick to inbox organization is keeping it under control. I like to keep my entire inbox viewable on one screen, and I don’t use the preview pane, so there’s no scrolling up or down. Once I’ve dealt with an email I delete it or file it into a project folder if I think it might be useful in the future. That’s not to say I don’t have to do a purge every now and then, but when I do it’s easy for me to sort my messages by projects/colours and quickly see which messages can stay and which ones should go.

What I like about colour coding is that at a glance I can see what the priorities are right away. Plus, it’s fun and makes my inbox look a little more interesting. It’s a fairly simple system but I’ve found that less complex organizational systems are often the most helpful and easiest to implement and use.