IT Project Management

I’ve been working on digital agencies since I got my B.Sc. degree. It has been a long way working with several people who has been using the Internet as a marketing place. I’ve heard a lot of cool and fancy terms: from B2B, B2C, relational marketing, e-marketing to Web 2.0, Project Management 2.0, Business 3.0. But it is time to use this BS (blog space) to promote my own perception.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I have been working for small, mid, a big companies in Latin America, so when I wrote “my own perception” I meant “my own perception of the Latin America digital agencies’ business”.

The fact

The whole advertising industry is living a change Era. The digital life is here, and the most of the agencies do not have the power to deliver what is needed. However all of them want a slice of the pie. You can see it everywhere: Most of the cases those are only fancy names for business units with no more than three or four guys, sharing resources between other units, or with unskilled resources, expensive managers but cheap developers and digital designers (designers who deliver quality digital outcomes).  Few names are: Wunderman Interactive, iLeo, JWT Digital, Ogilvy Interactive, and the list goes on. I will not say those companies do not deliver their work, I say those companies do no have what they said they have, and for production items, it is ok, but for strategy purposes… ? Would you give your money to a financial consultant who do not have any expertise?

Most of the agencies do not have digital strategist or believes that anyone with a little understanding of what Web is -because uses a Hotmail account and knows who to unblock the PC without calling IT-  or what has been successful projects in other regions will work here -the Copy&Paste model”.

Most of the companies do not have PMO’s -even the company I work for, what a shame! . For some companies, even project manager is not a role. - PLOP. Colombian expression for a big WHAT?

Most of the companies believes that digital is like traditional and also believes that everything can be done. I can say, I’m a innovator, I really do like to innovate, it is my passion, I need to innovate to keep me motivated. However, innovation should be -on digital agencies- a conjunction of two ideas, the creative and the technical. It is a shame when creative leaders have a great idea, client services sell the idea to the client, the client approves the idea and then the execution cannot be done due to technical limitation or the most common scenario: it cannot be done as the client wants, within the time and cost - how does triple restriction sounds to you?.

Technical team has become the pariahs -IT Crowd TV Series?- and creative team believes that they have the truth, and only real good developers and technical leads will solve the problems. Most of us vote for a president or governor with the same ideal!

My humble opinion

Digital Life is here, and agencies should keep doing what they do best, however digital cannot be the “another biz”, it should be an integrated part of the creative process that will deliver a whole new experience, brand perception, promotion or whatever. Digital is no more digital as itself, it is Physical and Digital as one. because people will demand more homogeneous solutions. Keep Facebook in your mind and compare the following questions: how many people in the world use Flickr? -include poor and developing countries. How many people use EventBrite? Or Google Sites? common people, parents, grandparents? Facebook put things together to deliver a simple solution. Now, my dad uses it, young people, old people. They can upload pictures, share videos, create events, invite people, ALL IN ONE, nobody taught them, there is no book to learn to use Facebook -ok probably there are a few, but did you own one?

There is a whole new world of opportunities for digital, however digital should be an integral part of the original idea conception -there is nothing more frustrating than see people thinking about big ideas, and then asking: “What we should do to include digital? Client demands digital!” - What? (PLOP again and again) Digital should be part of the main idea and not an additional piece.

Misunderstanding

Digital creative and SW development are not the same. I’m tired. I repeat this every day at work but nobody seems to listen. Digital creative is not software development. It looks like the same, BUT IT IS NOT. Development is a formal process -a real formal one, with architecture, design, development, testing, includes documentation, code review, OMG the list could be huge. How many times and agency delivers the documentation of the project? Documentation of their latest TV commercial? Post Mortem, Metrics? Iterations?. Development is a science like math, creative is an art. NOT THE SAME

Maintenance is not a project. As project manager I recognize what is a project, and what is not. Maintenance is not a project. Digital agencies fails delivering maintenance due to the resource management. Most of the time, digital development also include software products, software products has a different lifecycle. So do not ask why IBM got the job -they took GM away from our side few years ago, so keep it in mine from Digital Creative to pure IT and coding company. Creative conception will be an initial part, maintenance do NOT include creative conception, and probably will be related to code, integration and infrastructure subjects.

Traditional creative can be repeatable task for traditional agencies, but not for software. Software products could take years to deliver an initial release! -KEEP IN MIND YEARS AS 365 and little bit more days! So please stop requesting projects of 2 months that include SW development -like a CMS, a CMS customization, MMOG, MMOC or any other atrocity.

Software Architect and Software Designers are not coders. Coders are Coders. Are you assigning standard developers to deliver highly detailed interaction diagrams?. Please HAVE THE RIGHT PERSON TO DO THE JOB. If you persist in your idea to develop SW -oook it is your call-, but please assign real architects and designers. BTW: Wireframes sucks, wireframes are not technical documents, UML people LOL every time digital agencies say “our technical documentation includes wireframes” - PLOP!

Few TIPS

Keep doing your job. It is a good job, it is not a bad one, just be part of the solution, try not to be the problem.

Choose a model, you can be creative and use technical partners to deliver SW -again if you persist in your idea of developing software. However there are other options like “reuse” -do not reinvent the wheel! most of eMarketing software needs were developed already. However if you have a crushing new idea, do not treat the SW development as something that can be done by anyone. Good software products requires excellent teams and a LOT of time, so what if you want an excellent software product? You need the best -ask Google if you do not believe me.

Choose a side: It is like StarWars, you cannot be a creative-oriented company and a software development- oriented company, you should choose a side. The good thing is you can always have partners on the other side, there is not a war between sides.