5 reasons why your project might not go as planned

Over the past year, I have been part of about a dozen different projects. I will share with you what I have learned about project management from two perspectives: the project manager and the managed. If you can nail down these 5 main issues, you project has a much better chance of going smoothly.

#1 Content is king
 

You have probably heard it before but here's why it's true in this context. You can have all of the plans in the world. You have have a wireframes, sitemaps, javascript, jquery, php, etc. but if your content is either of low quality or doesn't exist, you will never realize the finished product the way you envisioned.

Say you are working on a website and you are going to do all of the web design and coding but the client would prefer to have someone else take the images. How is that going to effect the timeline of project completion? Can you rely on the photographer to take good pictures and share them with you in a way that is usable for your purposes?

The same could also happen for content writing. Maybe the client wants to share existing content with you and have you write the rest, but what happens if the information on the site is so specialized, that either  a) it would take you a long time to do the proper research to write the content yourself or b) the client will have to provide more content than they had initially though?

The point is that if you aren't thinking about where the content is going to come from, who is going to produce it and when it will be completed by, it could seriously affect the rest of the site design or any other project process. Based on the waterfall model, content is supposed to come before design and coding and there is good reason for that.

 #2 Trust

Trust is important. If you follow Aaron Draplin's advice, you'll work with your friends, in which case you can trust the people you work with on a project. The challenge comes when you are working on a type of project for the first time and you are figuring out how well your team works together. If you're lucky, you'll end up with a team that just clicks and excels at everything you need for the project.

On the other hand, if you are working with people you haven't worked with before, it is very important to build up trust amongst each other to keep the project running smoothly. What does that look like? It involves a balance between communicating together as a group and communicating with each individual team member. This is about developing expectations for people and familiarity as a way to motivate each team member during the project.

Alternatively, if you don't meet deadlines on time, or you don't check-in when expected, you can bet that you will lose trust from you team members and disrupt their ability to form expectations about how the project is going to unfold.

If you say you are going to do something by a certain time, one way or another, do it.

 #3 Communication

If you don't communicate your needs clearly, few people can help you. I'll give you an example. You're working on a project and you come up against a problem with part of your task for the week. When is the best time to bring that up?

Do you wait until the next team meeting to explain the problem to the whole group? Or, do you contact the project manager or a colleague before the next group meeting to address the problem.  You might be thinking a) I don't want to contact the project manager because then I will seem incompetent and he or she will think less of me, or b) I don't want to ask my colleague because they are busy doing something else and I don't want to distract them from their own work when I am expected to do this by myself.

In my experience, both of these assumptions are mistaken. Ultimately, everyone that is part of team needs to work together to complete a project. If you have a legitimate problem and you need help, it is an opportunity to learn from your colleagues and it shows the project manager that you are comfortable communicating your needs clearly to them. The last thing anyone wants is to arrive at the next group meeting with an expected piece of the project missing, especially if they are hearing about it for the first time at the meeting.

It costs everyone that much more time and confusion to have to adapt to that situation than it does for them to help you when you need it and almost as soon as you know you need help. This will keep things running smoothly for sure and you can build relationships by getting help and giving help in return.

#4 Reasonable Expectations

What happens if you have initiated a project and you are not sure how long the project is going to take or what is required to complete it? So far, this has happened to me more than once, and usually it is because I have a bold vision for a project I would like to undertake and I am so focused on the finished project, I overlook how I am going to get there.

Fortunately, these projects usually don't involve paying clients and I can use these experiences to build reasonable expectations in the future. This is why it is important to log your hours for the work you do. It is not always about getting paid to the dime as much as it is being able to gauge in the future how long something will take you. If you are really accurate, you will be able to see improvements in your projections over time so that you can write better project proposals without going over the amount of projected hours for each phase of the project. Your whole team will appreciate that.

It also helps to have your team log their hours because over time, you will have a sense of which team member can do what the fastest. Whether you are working in a scrum or a waterfall model, this can be helpful. For waterfall, you will be better able to decide who to hire for specific jobs, based on how fast and how well they complete a project. For scrum models, having your team log their hours will enable you split tasks up into reasonable chunks. You don't want something that might take an hour to take four hours or vis versa. There are always going to be unforeseen circumstances but it possible for your expectations to become more reasonable over time.

#5 Planning Planning Planning

Nothing ever goes to plan. At least not exactly. That's fine. That doesn't mean you shouldn't plan.

If you are project managing and you get to a point where people are asking for direction and you have no plan, it is an odd state to be in. Your primary job as project manager is to be able to give direction at all times. It is not about bossing people around as much as it is about being able to think ahead and process multiple variables to keep the project running smoothly.

So, if the team is super busy and you feel the need to jump outside of your role as project manager, it should rarely be at the risk of being able to assess the progress of the project and think ahead. If you are in scrum workflow, that is a different story because you are completing tasks as part of the team while helping the team to complete theirs.

Planning also involves recording the progress of the project. Keep good records of progress and make them available to the group if necessary. Noone should be duplicating eachother's work as a result of being unaware of what is complete or currently being worked on. Spreadsheets are the most basic tool for keep track of progress.

Take planning another way as well. If you are at the initial stages of a project, take your time. Do your research, and some thumbnails. It might seem like you don't have time to waste in the planning stage but it is more time consuming to plan halfway though the project because of a bad initial strategy or idea.

Even if it involves creating digital thumbnails or using technology to brainstorm ideas. Even if it involves familiarizing yourself with new technology or making sure the project had the right specifications, the point is that planning at the initial stages will relieve you of having to duplicate too much of your work if and when you have to change course a little or a lot.

 Send me your suggestions

Do you have any tips for successfully completing projects? Maybe you have resources you would like to share or a great story about lessons learned? Send me your feedback!

How to make responsive forms in wordpress?

Here is a scenario:

You have downloaded a responsive theme in wordpress and it has all the bells and whistles you need, after downloading a few plugins, that is.

You have uploaded a lot of content to the site and you need one last item: a form.

Here's the problem: the theme doesn't have a built-in form option. This means that any form plugin you download will likely produce a static form without some adjustments. It means that unless you can solve this problem, the only item on your site that won't be responsive is your form. What do you do?

If you have the perfect answer to this scenario, why not share with me your comments below?

The challenge was to create a form that would resize along with the rest of the page so that people on a mobile device could fill out the answers. It also looks better.

It turns out that for some coders and companies, they recognize that people probably won't fill out a long form on a mobile device, so why should we format the form to be responsive? As a personal mission, I decided to try anyway. I have a hunch that it would come in handy.


To begin, I downloaded more than one form plugin and tested them out.  I downloaded Formidable Forms because it is a drag and drop form builder but it has limited options with the free version and didn't fit my needs. I settled on Wordpress Form Manager because I could add any form field and because I only had to change the plugin css minimally to get it to be responsive. Here was my solution:

1) This step can be done outside of the style sheet when you enter information for each new entry. Basically, instead of entering a pixel width for your form, you can choose 100%. It means that your form will expand to the div that it is in and if the div size changes, the form dimensions will follow with it.

For the next step, I changed the 'ul' class in the main css to have a margin and padding of 0 so that all items in the form would justify left.

Next, in the main css,  I changed the margin border and padding in the 'fieldset' class to zero.

Lastly, there is an option in the Wordpress Form Manager within each specific form that you need to change.

In a specific form, below all of your form elements under 'appearance' you will need to change the label position from 'left' to 'top' this will make sure that all titles and input types are stacked on top of eachother to give you the most narrow form possible with this plugin.


By this point, there is no div that will be too large to fit within the content div. And because the content div is part of the responsive theme, it will already conform to browser and monitor sizes.

I hope this helps!


My next post will most likely be about project management on a range of projects I have worked on this year.

What is Design?

Function and Fashion

If you are thinking about graphic design, you are only part way there.  It turns out that design is everywhere. Good design might be visually appealing, but great design makes efficient use of resources as well. This applies to graphic design as much as the built environment.

We've seen lots of examples of advertisement that have to compensate with visually appealing imagery, or motor vehicles that look flashy but have very little under the hood. Instead, the balance should always be in the middle.

Aiming Higher

 I recently attended The Salazar Awards with keynote Speaker and fellow Canadian, Robert L. Peters of Circle Design Incorporated. In a short time, to an audience of mainly design students, Peters redefined what it means to be a designer and the importance of "Aiming Higher" in our work.

It's about recognizing some of the more challenging problems in our world, and solving them.  First comes the problem, then the design.  Problems like water and land usage and durable construction with fewer resources. Disciplines like industrial ecology are fundamental for this.

All of our built environments including architecture, computer systems, city planning, business and social models, and technology (now matter how primitive), have aspects of design. For example, the  LEED Building Rating System is all about solving problems around efficiency for energy and building materials. The challenge is to travel upstream so that design is involved in the initial planning stages of a project, long before graphic design comes into play.

Aim higher!

Vancouver: a mecca for design and creativity

It's clear that in a city like Vancouver, there are so many creative minds involved in design of many forms.

Creative Mornings Vancouver is one example. Every month or so, the creative community gathers for an hour and a half to share ideas on design and creativity. With keynotes speakers than range from Bif Naked, to Bob Kronbauer of Vancouver is Awesome, each event brings a unique exchange of ideas and inspiration. If you haven't been to one and are thinking of going you can watch previous events online.

This is only the tip of the iceberg.

Just this Friday, I was amazed at the positive and creative ideas swirling around at the Re: Think Housing Jam at The Hive in Vancouver. The Vancouver Design Nerds  and Gen Why Media Project organized the event to build a conversation about affordable housing solutions in Vancouver. Importantly, what could have been a dry, technical and bureaucratic discussion about zoning and rising housing prices turned out to be one of the most free flowing and productive discussions on housing this city has ever seen.

Events like these will foster excellent submissions to the Mayor's Task Force on Housing and Affordability –  something that we can all look forward to in this marvellous city.

Design as a way of life

Over the past few months I have seen a side of design I could never have learned in school alone.

With examples like these, it is encouraging to know that many of us can be involved in design just by showing up and taking an interest. It starts with one event, one conversation, one idea and grows from there.  

It opens up so many new possibilities to know that the practices of design apply to nearly all aspects of our life. 

What is too much social media? What works?

After signing up for a lot of different social media platforms, I still can't decide: what is too much social media?

For the past 5 years, I have posted all I can on Facebook and really started picking up twitter in the past year and a half thanks to @janniaragon and @BrittFhaugh.

I have been to a few social media/programming events in Vancouver and the way that groups are using twitter has opened up some new possibilities for me. For example, creating a hashtag for a specific event and asking people to tweet about the event using that hashtag.

In may cases, the result is that the hashtag starts trending while the event is happening and people consider that to be good press. Doing this is essentially free and it's because if people want to meet up or connect online after the event, they know where to find some of the event attendees by looking at the trend.

For facebook, the most solid advice I received so far was at @NetSquared Event a couple months ago. According to @dbarefoot the key is to set the expectations of your followers/audience so that they know in advance if they follow you, you will be posting one a day/week/hour – what ever the case may be.

That way, if people are concerned that you post to much or too little, you can emphasize that that is what your social media is designed for.

Also, the idea that you would only use your social media feeds for self promotion is a bad idea. People will often follow someone regularly not just because of what you can offer based on your own insights and services, but because of who you follow and other ideas you share. This is what it means to build a community, instead of simply following people to put only your own ideas out there.

Also on Facebook, posts with images do well in terms of 'likes'. This makes sense in a our increasingly visual society and the trick is to have images that make you think and/or convey a message clearly, with a couple sentences to help provide content.

I have recently been exploring tumblr, soundcloud, youtube and vimeo and I know there is a lot more to learn.

How do you use social media? What works?