Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

There is a point at work and especially being a Web producer when you reach the ultimate stress level, the apex of the vortex of stress. Many things can cause this and most days you are hovering at some level of stress. It isn't a bad thing, most days it's the adrenaline that gets your job done right, gives the perfect creative spark to a meeting or the urge to buy the whole office cupcakes.

But moments do exist when you could snap just if someone asks you what time it is. We all get to that point, it's okay. It's not about how stressful a project was or how crazy the timeline was, it's about the team that helps you get the finished project out. As crazy as it all seems at the time I always look back at those moments and am thankful because it made us all work better and harder together.

I salute you stress vortex, you make my job interesting and you make me realize how lucky I am to have a team that works like a well oiled machine.

 

Capstrat recently wrapped up a pitch to a prospect whose name I will not mention here. It was a wonderfully draining experience.

Once a presentation date is set I, like my counterparts, switch into that special gear reserved only for high speed new business pursuits.

What you accomplish is only limited by the number of hours before you walk into that room full of judges.

The process starts off well-paced and methodical and ends up turning into a crescendo of last minute refinements and caffeine-induced second-guessing. I love it.

One minute I feel like I have helped solved the problem that will help us win the business.

The next minute, I feel like a miserable hack who should consider changing careers.

The curveballs come from all directions, and for a change, they are not being thrown by a client. Hindsight shows you they were all for good reasons.

In the end, the pieces all come together, the presentation gels and the team ends up on the same highly scrutinized page.

When you see the client nod his head in complete agreement, you know it was all worthwhile.

At the end of the day you are both exhausted and energized.

Win or lose, we are better off for having gone through the process.

I am ready to do it again, but not this week.

Part of making a strategic interactive firm successful is figuring out what went well, what didn't go well and most importantly how to capitalize on successes and learn from mistakes. Here is a compilation of project post mortem ideas Capstrat Interactive is exploring. We welcome feedback. 

1. Opportunities we may not be thinking of / where the hidden gems may be:

• In the ambiguous space between what went well and what went wrong.  What was mediocre and why?

• What agitated people (internal staff or the client)?  Individuals’ attitudes about one aspect of the project will impact how they feel about every aspect of the project.

• Consider a post-post-mortum meeting with someone not involved on the project in in other areas of our business to discuss possible offline tactics that the client may benefit from.

• Connect the client’s project to our other clients.  While everyone is in the room, take a moment to think about things we did that could benefit our other clients. Make a list of clients to send relevant project case study to (or ask other staff to send the site ideas to their contacts.) This needs to benefit our clients first and foremost. We should imagine that our clients want to see what other comapnies are doing online. There are likely parallel ideas. 

2. What we are looking for with a post mortem:

• Obviously what was done well, and what needs improvement, as is currently done.  

• We need to look way back to the beginning to see what opportunities we missed now that we see it in the final form.

• What internal or external feedback needs to be considered? Capture it.

• Where we may have missed a tactic or idea on the original interactive blueprint as more ideas surface from other experiences we have. 

• Seeing this in the final form, what does the next step look like on a project of this nature? How can we fold learned items into subsequent projects.

• Places where our process may have broken down for any reason; where didn’t we collaborate/talk when we or the client should have. What obstacles were in our way, how did we deal with them? How did they affect the client?

3. What outcomes we want to take to the client:

• In the past we have given our clients a top 10 reasons their site is awesome. This is great for them to feel good about how strategic their site  is and we should be sure to do this consistently. We should also be honest and candid. Every project has missed opportuities for reasons of budget, timeline, shared team politics, etc. Our goal with the post mortem should always be to surface the best ideas regardless of constraints and help steward the best outcome. 

• We should add a top 10 list of things to remember going forward.  These would be more practical, and have the client thinking about what we ought to monitor collaboratively on their site and how to expand the capabilities, visibility, etc of their site.

• What does our client need to know about what we have created? Think of this like a users guide. The challenge is that it is hard to know what our client's don't know. This needs to be an ongoing effort to benefit every client retro-actively and going forward. We should post this to our client extranet to benefit each client.

4. How we should arrive at outcomes:

• Make sure every post mortem meeting has a few copies of the original blueprint (Web strategy) floating around the room. We will source it repeatedly. 

• We should have everyone in the post mortem write first, before anyone begins talking (maybe 15 minutes).  This could be in response to key questions.  This could capture a lot more information than if everyone talked for that 20 minutes.

• Use sock puppets to act out some of the scenarios — it works for psychologists.

• Have someone look back through the emails before the meeting. Distill highlights to give context (or countour) to the relationship and what pressures or events had an impact on our project.

• Assume that the client/3rd party did not make any mistakes.  If we accept responsibility for everything then we have the ability to change it next time...but are powerless if we blame outside forces.  (e.g. The hosting company had problem the day before the site was supposed to go live...not the client's fault. It is our fault that we waited until the day before to re-check the hosting picture.)

5. Time and Money:

• Look at the tasks that were entered into our time management software and the hours assigned for each task and actual hours spent.  See if any of these tasks can be subdivided into 10 hour tasks intead of lump 30-60 hour tasks that are much more difficult to track. Disaggregate tasks and focus on being efficient stewards of our client's budgets.

• Talk about specifics with respect to how we can cut down on the time certain tasks take. Push to do more quality with less resources. Limit meeting time without compromising collaboration. 

• Start a list of what tasks, if any, went over budget or time, by how much and why. Be open with the client about real vs. budgeted allocations.

6. Additional thoughts:

• Post-mortems are great opportunities to create and start using a services playbook. Start with the givens (lessons learned, technical knowledge about strategic, design, usability, development, monitoring issues, etc.).

• Take the things that naturally arise in conversation and put them into the playbook format that is client-specific.

• Obviously a wiki is ideal to capture this info after the meeting. Teams interested in continuous improvement should have an operational wiki which should be an integral part of any process. Give unfettered access to this wiki to our client contacts.
  

• Begin drafting the recommendations for each client's 6 month or 1 year check up. Help them learn from each of our engagements.