You landed a project. Great! What now?
You wowed the client with an amazing proposal. They signed on the dotted line. You dazzled them during your kickoff meeting. High-fives and handshakes all around.
You’re about to embark on a brand new project, a blank slate your talented team can transform into a beautiful web presence. It’s time to get to work.
What’s the first thing you do?
Worst Case: Build the Plane on the Way Down
Your team is stoked to start a new project. They all have mad skills, great attitudes and great intentions. That ought to be enough to see you through, right? Plans, workflows, and project management would only stifle the team’s creativity.
So you encourage everyone to grab their pieces of the airplane and head for the tallest cliff. The looming deadline will just help everyone pull together and get the job done, right?
Right?
Best Case: Telepathic Coordination Activated
Your team is more than just a well-oiled machine. You’re more like the synchronized swimming champs of the tech world. Everyone on the project knows the process for getting started on a new assignment, as well as how project management and communication will work throughout.
Your whole team will move with robotic precision, writing clean and brutally efficient code, never stepping on each other’s commits. Everyone’s efforts are so well coordinated it’s like they share a brain. Your team will deliver on time and under budget, yet again.
Right?
Let’s Get Real: A Little Order, a Little Chaos
Your agency is most likely somewhere between the best and worst case scenarios. Most agencies have some standards in place. But many haven’t taken time to determine which standards must move consistently from project to project—and which shouldn’t—to maximize efficiency and minimize overhead.
A well-developed, consistent approach is the key to efficiency. It’s the best way to deliver for your clients while also equipping your team to take on more and/or more complex projects. What’s more, a solid standards-based process is something you can market and sell as you grow your agency’s business—it can help you land more serious gigs, as well as increase the strategic value of the service you provide to clients.
Your team may not be frantically assembling an airplane in free-fall. But unless you have a neural-linked hivemind situation going on, odds are you could stand to improve your processes. This guide will help you increase efficiency and set standard workflows that will serve your agency for years to come.
Ready to turn your agency into a machine of web dev awesome? Read on for expert insight from these top agencies:
