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Tips for Effective Discovery Sessions

When it comes to digital projects, strategic ideas require a lot of planning before a team can even begin to write code, let alone release the new feature to customers. Developers are notorious for asking many questions about the product requirements: What is and isn’t included in the scope? What do competitors do in this area? Which platforms or devices will need to be supported? What happens when customers use the digital product in unpredictable ways? What security vulnerabilities might the new product create?

Leaders may rush to start projects, but skipping these crucial questions can create future problems. A … Read more >

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Effective Sprint Planning

Sprint planning is one of the key events in Agile methodology. It’s a meeting when the team aligns on what business value will be delivered in the next sprint, which tasks will need to be completed, and who will do the work. While agile methodology is most commonly used by software development teams, other fields can benefit from effective and frequent planning sessions too … Read more >

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The Optimal Size of a Team—And Why It Matters

At the beginning of my career, I didn’t pay too much attention to the size of the team – it came with the job and wasn’t something I could easily change. After being in a variety of work environments over a number of years, I noticed that a team’s size has an impact on its productivity, effectiveness, and happiness. I worked on teams that consisted of five or six people and teams that had 20 people or more … Read more >

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Useful tips for building trust in the workplace

“This is the real secret of life – to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”

— Alan Watts

Most of us can tell the difference between a trusting atmosphere at work and a toxic one. In fact we can register it almost instantly – within days, if not hours of joining a new organisation. I’ve had a misfortune to participate in team meetings that were so stiff you could cut the tension with a knife. I also worked in companies where people were … Read more >

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Productive writing in six simple steps

You sit down in front of your laptop, your cup of tea is ready, all your other jobs are mentally set aside, you look at the screen, you concentrate, and… nothing. It’s not like you don’t know what to write about – beautiful ideas keep floating in your head with admirable grace, but they just don’t line up into words and sentences. Sounds familiar? We’ve all been there.

Starting to write a new document, a new article, a new chapter can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. I once attended an event at BBC Media City in Salford … Read more >

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How to prioritise website improvements

A website is never done. Like a garden, a website needs constant attention and care in order to flourish. Content updates, bug fixes and security patches are essential website maintenance jobs that must be done for the website to survive, in the same way as your garden plants need watering in order to grow. In addition to the basic maintenance, there are also constant opportunities for improvement.

University of Leeds is an ultra-large organisation with more than 1,000 websites and the backlog of improvements for university web presence contains hundreds of items. When the list is so long, it’s easy … Read more >

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Building a Successful Roadmap

When I first started working as a team lead, most of my days were filled with solving urgent problems raised by customers and colleagues. There was no hiding from it – I was firefighting a long list of problems, with no end in sight. My team resolved many issues, but new ones kept coming. There was always more to do than could be done with the existing resources. My reactive approach kept us busy but didn’t move the team forward.

I knew that not all issues were true emergencies and that better planning was needed, but didn’t have enough experience … Read more >

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The art and science of estimating large web projects

We’ve all made commitments to complete tasks by a certain deadline that later proved impossible to meet – it’s human nature. Most people, irrespective of their gender, race, nationality and age, display what is known as optimism bias – a tendency to overestimate the likelihood of positive events [1]. When we make plans, we expect things to go smoothly, with hardly any issues getting in the way.

Optimism bias is only one of many challenges that organisations face when estimating web projects. At the start of the project the levels of uncertainty are high which means that developers aren’t … Read more >

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What to Consider Before Upgrading Your Web CMS

The half-life of knowledge refers to the time it takes for half of all facts in a certain subject area to become obsolete. We can’t predict which facts will be disproved, but we know that some of the facts will eventually get replaced by new, more advanced knowledge in the future. Physics and mathematics are relatively slow moving in this respect, with half-life of 13 and 9 years respectively, whereas half of medical facts expire in 2 years.

Those of us who work in software development know from personal experience that technology is a fast paced industry. Web developers and … Read more >

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How to Write a Website Design Brief

At the very start of my career I worked in a digital agency. As a web developer I juggled several projects at once, and the agency as a whole had hundreds of clients on their books at any given time. Whilst this fast-paced environment offered me great opportunities for career growth, one of my biggest frustrations was never having enough time to truly understand the nature of the business of my clients.

Since then, I worked on the other side of the table too, selecting digital agencies to deliver web projects for large organisations. This experience taught me that finding … Read more >