I really did start off trying to find gripes by clients about their web design/iMedia companies. But I just kept finding moans (legitimate ones) about clients from iMedia colleagues.
It seems the tide has turned because, although recognised by all in the industry for many years, this was a pretty taboo subject - something about biting the hand that feeds you, maybe? It is a bit of a trap when your clients are driving you mad though they do grudgingly pay up, perhaps not regularly, or on time, or enough.
The more that these problems are shared openly, the better for the industry. Why not keep a file of moans and extract from it a summary of behaviour that is not acceptable and the reasons why. Then you can hand it to your clients as part of the pre-amble prior to a contract about the way you work. Yes, it might put them off. But that’s your decision. Do you want/need time and money wasters? We certainly know of companies that have got so fed up with their clients that they have deliberately given them a hard time and are delighted when they say they are leaving for another company. Sympathies to the ‘other’ company!
What do you think of, An Open Letter to All Clients On Behalf of Designers Everywhere, 12th September in the Tiger Monkey Creative blog? It rings so true. Then this is followed up by, 5 Rotten Things No One Else Has Told You About The Clients You’ll Work For, 18th September.
It seems that they are really getting it in the neck from some clients. I wonder what the other side of the story would be from the clients themselves.
Closer to my original intention is Andy Kilworth’s rant about annoying web design features, 24 Moans about Web Design and Usability from a Grumpy SEO, 17th September. This arose because he was trying to buy things online for himself and came across annoying features too often for his intention, his temper and his limited time. Perhaps you can use them positively with your clients to help you argue against these design elements if your clients want them. It always helps to have a professional third party say things that you would like to say yourself. That’s why there are ‘consultants’, you know!
Andy Kilworth goes through things like: intrusive Captchas, the efficiency of the transaction, clear/current pricing, no human intervention like sales calls/videos, ability to really buy online, constant registrations [one of our gripes too], asking for too much personal data, accessibility, intrusive multimedia, grammar and content issues, naff 404 error pages, interfering with recognised web-use conventions, unclear navigation, intrusive and inappropriate adverts, and so on. As an observation, I did find his post annoying myself because of its strange response to click-through! It may be just my machine/versioning/browser etc!
Overall it has always been hard to influence your clients in the way that they work with you and the way they relate to design issues. They do need to be educated and it is a shame that we have had to bear the burden of doing this. It should be part and parcel of their training now. Web and social media presence is the norm for business so let’s issue a wake-up call to the general training industry for business professionals – please.
Sunday, 23 September 2012
Thursday, 13 September 2012
Content Marketing and iMedia - what's your strategy?
We're all familiar with the content is king maxim, but how many of us have taken it seriously? As a segment of a marketing strategy, your clients might be very clued up and tell you what they want and when they want it. Their strategy might well be hidden behind their decisions. We might just be picking up their demands and grumbling about 'clients making changes again', or, 'clients adding in things again'. You know, they say things like 'put this up on the web site ASAP', then a week later 'why isn't it linked to the blog?', and the next day, 'we need to produce a short video segment based on it to go on Facebook in the next couple of days', and so on.
But it all might be part of their content marketing strategy. That should make us stop grumbling and change our attitude to some respect. Yes, they should have indicated that they had phased roll-outs of content for different purposes, but to them it might just be self evident. Understanding your clients and their business has got harder, that's true, but we can't serve their needs until we understand what they are trying to achieve.
Our clients' marketing people have traditionally driven many of the processes that have caused grief for the iMedia lot. It was interesting for us to dip a toe in their water this week for a change and look at some of the content pressures they are facing.
Apparently content marketing has been a strong topic over 2012. They are tasked with embracing all the interactive media channels at the salient time for their messages and addressing the right audiences with the right messages to maximise awareness/sales/brand-building and so on. Now, we appreciate that the different channels from website, microsite, blog, mobile, Twitter, Facebook, electronic billboards and connected tv appeal to different audience profiles, and that content needs to be tailored to suit the profile and the display, but perhaps what we haven't bought into is that the marketers are on top of the reactions to the messages and want to respond accordingly. So if your client needs fast response, how can you provide it and at what cost?
This is the crux of the matter for us. We need to know the type of demands on our resources and plan accordingly. This means that the questions should be asked about demands and response times across channels from the beginning of your relationship. Is that happening? Then you also need to consider reviewing your longer term projects where your client's offerings have grown organically as the channels have matured. Are they now asking for more content across more channels than anticipated? Should you reassess what you are doing, the stretch on your resources and the costs involved?
To give an example of what marketers have been facing this year on the question of content marketing, take a look at a summary of key speakers, Marketing Basics: 7 B2B Content Marketing Tactics, by David Kirkpatrick at Marketing Sherpa, September 12th.
Tactic 1 Understand that content comes in more than one format.
Tactic 2 Find content topics and provide value
Tactic 3 Map content to B2B buying stages
Tactic 4 Remember that content marketing is part of an inbound strategy
Tactic 5 Use social media to distribute content
Tactic 6 Think like a publisher – create a content calendar
Tactic 7 Think beyond free with content marketing
Their pressures become our pressures, so it's as well to be ready.
But it all might be part of their content marketing strategy. That should make us stop grumbling and change our attitude to some respect. Yes, they should have indicated that they had phased roll-outs of content for different purposes, but to them it might just be self evident. Understanding your clients and their business has got harder, that's true, but we can't serve their needs until we understand what they are trying to achieve.
Our clients' marketing people have traditionally driven many of the processes that have caused grief for the iMedia lot. It was interesting for us to dip a toe in their water this week for a change and look at some of the content pressures they are facing.
Apparently content marketing has been a strong topic over 2012. They are tasked with embracing all the interactive media channels at the salient time for their messages and addressing the right audiences with the right messages to maximise awareness/sales/brand-building and so on. Now, we appreciate that the different channels from website, microsite, blog, mobile, Twitter, Facebook, electronic billboards and connected tv appeal to different audience profiles, and that content needs to be tailored to suit the profile and the display, but perhaps what we haven't bought into is that the marketers are on top of the reactions to the messages and want to respond accordingly. So if your client needs fast response, how can you provide it and at what cost?
This is the crux of the matter for us. We need to know the type of demands on our resources and plan accordingly. This means that the questions should be asked about demands and response times across channels from the beginning of your relationship. Is that happening? Then you also need to consider reviewing your longer term projects where your client's offerings have grown organically as the channels have matured. Are they now asking for more content across more channels than anticipated? Should you reassess what you are doing, the stretch on your resources and the costs involved?
To give an example of what marketers have been facing this year on the question of content marketing, take a look at a summary of key speakers, Marketing Basics: 7 B2B Content Marketing Tactics, by David Kirkpatrick at Marketing Sherpa, September 12th.
Tactic 1 Understand that content comes in more than one format.
Tactic 2 Find content topics and provide value
Tactic 3 Map content to B2B buying stages
Tactic 4 Remember that content marketing is part of an inbound strategy
Tactic 5 Use social media to distribute content
Tactic 6 Think like a publisher – create a content calendar
Tactic 7 Think beyond free with content marketing
Their pressures become our pressures, so it's as well to be ready.
Thursday, 6 September 2012
Assessing risks in iMedia projects and lessons learnt
We've met some thorny problems recently over the maintenance of a long standing project that has been ticking over happily for six years. The design had been done by one company, the server hosting by another and the database processing back-end was done by us. The client managed the three companies in their separate roles. All has not gone smoothly just recently and it provides a salient trigger for a few points to bear in mind if you have long-running projects that just ... work.
Lesson 1 Don't get complacent. Re-assess the risks even on stable projects. There were several signs of risks in hindsight. Key players left two companies and the tacit intelligence they had built up about the nuances of the project left with them. The new staff struggled to catch up. On our side we will be providing detailed briefing documents to help new hosting staff understand how the database fits together, as it isn't obvious. We are also improving our 'disaster recovery' at our client's insistence (quite right too).
Lesson 2 Check the level of experience of the newcomers and point out to the companies that it is their responsibility to manage the changeover of staff successfully with enough back-up of the right level of experience to be mentors.
It is hard to meddle in other companies, of course, but in the end you can voice your concerns about the risks to the client and it is up to them to manage the companies. They pay them. But you should also be aware that you can help cover this risk by briefing people fully about how things work.
Lesson 3 The unforeseen consequences of a tiny bit extra.
When you get that niggling feeling, it probably means there's a risk that needs to be covered! We had that niggling feeling when the design company needed to insert a tiny extra database to log accesses to the public end of the system to make sure that people were limited on the amount of data they could download from the web site. This appears a sound bit of security for the whole database system, we'd all agree. So, what happened?
The system as a whole gets around a million hits a week and the new tiny database was actually being continuously updated. So the server logging increased dramatically and when this was coupled with the logging done as the database was rebuilt the server just ran out of disc space; very suddenly. Knowing what could be deleted without affecting the ongoing rebuild was not straightforward.
Lesson 4 Even back-up systems fail.
Yes, although everyone thought there was the emergency backup system if the database failed, the back-up failed too! There was the strangest set of circumstances, naturally. The server company physically moved the servers which lead to cascading set of failures. (See Andy's blog of two weeks ago Escape to the country, 27th August.) The emergency fallover backup wasn't quite isolated enough as its database was automatically following changes from the server it was mirroring and it mirrored the failure too.
Lesson 5 If one thing goes wrong, other things are more likely to as well! It's that tip of Murphy's (Law) iceberg. These things in isolation wouldn’t have been so bad, but they all happened in quick succession. Maybe too, this was because all had run so smoothly for years.
A long- and smooth-running project should be praised constantly for its stability and the people concerned need praise too. We are all guilty of only noticing the errors and moaning about them. Give credit to the old, forgotten but smooth-running projects. But keep an eye on them.
Lesson 1 Don't get complacent. Re-assess the risks even on stable projects. There were several signs of risks in hindsight. Key players left two companies and the tacit intelligence they had built up about the nuances of the project left with them. The new staff struggled to catch up. On our side we will be providing detailed briefing documents to help new hosting staff understand how the database fits together, as it isn't obvious. We are also improving our 'disaster recovery' at our client's insistence (quite right too).
Lesson 2 Check the level of experience of the newcomers and point out to the companies that it is their responsibility to manage the changeover of staff successfully with enough back-up of the right level of experience to be mentors.
It is hard to meddle in other companies, of course, but in the end you can voice your concerns about the risks to the client and it is up to them to manage the companies. They pay them. But you should also be aware that you can help cover this risk by briefing people fully about how things work.
Lesson 3 The unforeseen consequences of a tiny bit extra.
When you get that niggling feeling, it probably means there's a risk that needs to be covered! We had that niggling feeling when the design company needed to insert a tiny extra database to log accesses to the public end of the system to make sure that people were limited on the amount of data they could download from the web site. This appears a sound bit of security for the whole database system, we'd all agree. So, what happened?
The system as a whole gets around a million hits a week and the new tiny database was actually being continuously updated. So the server logging increased dramatically and when this was coupled with the logging done as the database was rebuilt the server just ran out of disc space; very suddenly. Knowing what could be deleted without affecting the ongoing rebuild was not straightforward.
Lesson 4 Even back-up systems fail.
Yes, although everyone thought there was the emergency backup system if the database failed, the back-up failed too! There was the strangest set of circumstances, naturally. The server company physically moved the servers which lead to cascading set of failures. (See Andy's blog of two weeks ago Escape to the country, 27th August.) The emergency fallover backup wasn't quite isolated enough as its database was automatically following changes from the server it was mirroring and it mirrored the failure too.
Lesson 5 If one thing goes wrong, other things are more likely to as well! It's that tip of Murphy's (Law) iceberg. These things in isolation wouldn’t have been so bad, but they all happened in quick succession. Maybe too, this was because all had run so smoothly for years.
A long- and smooth-running project should be praised constantly for its stability and the people concerned need praise too. We are all guilty of only noticing the errors and moaning about them. Give credit to the old, forgotten but smooth-running projects. But keep an eye on them.
Thursday, 30 August 2012
Critical of your own professionals? Know how to do things better?
It's all very well if your clients criticise as you always feel that they don't know what they are talking about in tech/design/interactive terms, bless them. But when your own colleagues start criticising, it's a bit like a road-rage flashpoint! Let's try and learn how to deal with some of this criticism to make life easier. Plus remember, this sort of undermining of a team or team members and its consequences is the project managers' responsibility too. You'll turn a blind eye at your cost.
If you don't think this can be a problem for you, see how many are happy to point the critical finger. Many are fellow developers. See www.nearperfect.co.uk for a plethora of criticisms. Clear, short content is king at www.goup.co.uk, and problems with social media icons are explored in www.jbiwebdesign.co.uk.
There are, of course, good design tenets that we all try to follow and often the criticisms are well founded but what happens when you are aware of the tenets but circumstances stop you applying these? Then the criticisms cut deep.
Phil Sturgeon's recent blog, Understanding Circumstances, is a refreshing, albeit straight talking (meaning here, full of expletives), response to such tech criticisms that will make you grin. Do look at it. Understandably he provokes quite a few honest replies too. He wants critics to think about the circumstances the iMedia product is created in because those affect the performance and design whatever the developer might want to use as an alternative. He appeals for sympathetic understanding of the constraints people might be working under that can lead to such poor end results.
So, we have those that need educating about good and bad design tenets who can benefit from all the advice available as per the first set of links we suggest above, and then we have those that know but are not allowed to apply the tenets because of the circumstances arising from the business field they are in, the stakeholders' or clients' power over them etc. We think this is valid info for anyone in the iMedia field. Yes, let’s understand more before we point fingers.
If you don't think this can be a problem for you, see how many are happy to point the critical finger. Many are fellow developers. See www.nearperfect.co.uk for a plethora of criticisms. Clear, short content is king at www.goup.co.uk, and problems with social media icons are explored in www.jbiwebdesign.co.uk.
There are, of course, good design tenets that we all try to follow and often the criticisms are well founded but what happens when you are aware of the tenets but circumstances stop you applying these? Then the criticisms cut deep.
Phil Sturgeon's recent blog, Understanding Circumstances, is a refreshing, albeit straight talking (meaning here, full of expletives), response to such tech criticisms that will make you grin. Do look at it. Understandably he provokes quite a few honest replies too. He wants critics to think about the circumstances the iMedia product is created in because those affect the performance and design whatever the developer might want to use as an alternative. He appeals for sympathetic understanding of the constraints people might be working under that can lead to such poor end results.
So, we have those that need educating about good and bad design tenets who can benefit from all the advice available as per the first set of links we suggest above, and then we have those that know but are not allowed to apply the tenets because of the circumstances arising from the business field they are in, the stakeholders' or clients' power over them etc. We think this is valid info for anyone in the iMedia field. Yes, let’s understand more before we point fingers.
Monday, 27 August 2012
Escape to the country
Hello from deepest darkest Rutland: England's smallest county; beautifully rural, nicely quiet and with only a whiff of silage.
Yes, ATSF and its domestic staff (Elaine and I) have moved. Time for a change.
So, you are no-doubt asking, how's the connectivity? For haven't we heard that Rutland (and rural UK in general) is basically end of the queue when it comes to handing out bandwidth?
It's been an interesting couple of weeks and we spent one of them with only a slow GSM data connection on my iPhone as a means of getting online. BT (bless them) had my new phone line waiting when we arrived but, for some unknown reason, Demon (my ISP) weren't able to order my broadband until the phone was active and then it was going to be another week. I have a suspicion that if I had ordered BT broadband then they could have been synchronised but I need a static IP address and I've been a Demon customer almost since they started. There is a local contender, the very interesting Rutland Telecom, but they can't help me at the moment. In the end I had a hurried conversation with Demon ordering the broadband while I was literally in mid-move part-way up the A1.
As an aside I should add the Rutland is being connected in the next 12 months, by enthusiastic payers like Rutland Telecom and, presumably even BT, so I may yet see fibre to the bathtub around here. At least, Demon tell me that my local exchange (Cottesmore) will be unbundled in March.
The email about the broadband arrived bright and early after exactly a week. I had some trouble setting up the wi-fi (stone walls do not a good RF path make) but finally got it all sorted. The ADSL connected up once I sorted out the new login credentials and I was back online. I have to tell you that coincidentally the past week has been just about the worst for spam that I've ever had. I call it being spam-bombed. When I got to my mail on the computer I downloaded over 1500 emails of which only about a dozen were real ones. Talk about wheat and chaff!
At this point I decided to check my bandwidth. I'd checked earlier with both BT and Demon online and found that the speed should be about 7.5 megabits so when I did a real speed check I was surprised to see it hitting 2 megabits. I'm only 100 metres from the exchange (and 50 from the pub). Reading the small print on an email Demon sent me (dug out from beneath a pile of that spam) I found that I had been put on a package with the ominous letters '2000' in the title. A capped package? Nobody told me. After a somewhat assertive call from me they are looking into it.
Meantime, the hosting company for one of my main clients decided to move machines between data centres. (Experienced readers will see what's coming.) On restart both of the computers holding the main databases failed and when one was replaced and rebuilt my database didn't seem to be working. Without an online connection, I spent a frustrating time on the phone to the weekend support desk but between us we could find nothing wrong. Nothing in the error logs. It turned out that there was nothing wrong: the database was fine; the problem lay elsewhere. It was what we used to call finger trouble back in the BBC.
You'd think that moving in August would be uneventful? How's your week been?
Yes, ATSF and its domestic staff (Elaine and I) have moved. Time for a change.
So, you are no-doubt asking, how's the connectivity? For haven't we heard that Rutland (and rural UK in general) is basically end of the queue when it comes to handing out bandwidth?
It's been an interesting couple of weeks and we spent one of them with only a slow GSM data connection on my iPhone as a means of getting online. BT (bless them) had my new phone line waiting when we arrived but, for some unknown reason, Demon (my ISP) weren't able to order my broadband until the phone was active and then it was going to be another week. I have a suspicion that if I had ordered BT broadband then they could have been synchronised but I need a static IP address and I've been a Demon customer almost since they started. There is a local contender, the very interesting Rutland Telecom, but they can't help me at the moment. In the end I had a hurried conversation with Demon ordering the broadband while I was literally in mid-move part-way up the A1.
As an aside I should add the Rutland is being connected in the next 12 months, by enthusiastic payers like Rutland Telecom and, presumably even BT, so I may yet see fibre to the bathtub around here. At least, Demon tell me that my local exchange (Cottesmore) will be unbundled in March.
The email about the broadband arrived bright and early after exactly a week. I had some trouble setting up the wi-fi (stone walls do not a good RF path make) but finally got it all sorted. The ADSL connected up once I sorted out the new login credentials and I was back online. I have to tell you that coincidentally the past week has been just about the worst for spam that I've ever had. I call it being spam-bombed. When I got to my mail on the computer I downloaded over 1500 emails of which only about a dozen were real ones. Talk about wheat and chaff!
At this point I decided to check my bandwidth. I'd checked earlier with both BT and Demon online and found that the speed should be about 7.5 megabits so when I did a real speed check I was surprised to see it hitting 2 megabits. I'm only 100 metres from the exchange (and 50 from the pub). Reading the small print on an email Demon sent me (dug out from beneath a pile of that spam) I found that I had been put on a package with the ominous letters '2000' in the title. A capped package? Nobody told me. After a somewhat assertive call from me they are looking into it.
Meantime, the hosting company for one of my main clients decided to move machines between data centres. (Experienced readers will see what's coming.) On restart both of the computers holding the main databases failed and when one was replaced and rebuilt my database didn't seem to be working. Without an online connection, I spent a frustrating time on the phone to the weekend support desk but between us we could find nothing wrong. Nothing in the error logs. It turned out that there was nothing wrong: the database was fine; the problem lay elsewhere. It was what we used to call finger trouble back in the BBC.
You'd think that moving in August would be uneventful? How's your week been?
Saturday, 11 August 2012
Content and flow – isn’t that what it's all about?
It's been a while since we took a hard look at the initial stages of interactive design. Like other things this has changed radically. Defining content used to be the forgotten area unless you were working on interactive training where the outline and detailed design phases used to dominate. But defining the content for all types of interactivity has become a major phase of design. Now we have information architects (IA) who organise content and flow of a website, based on some principles that can be articulated, that have been derived through evidence gathering. (Martin Belam, Inside the Guardian Blog, Feb 2010.)
As well as information architects, jobs have asked for data architects, business architects, solution architects, technical architects and so on. Yes, I hear you, what about user experience (UX), where does this fit in? This has had an explosion of people flocking round the candle flame of UX as supply has out-stripped demand for the skills. Cennydd Bowles decries the watering down of his chosen profession and warns of the demise of UX in his 2011 Summit presentation at Colorado, The rise and fall of User Experience. It's a well thought through and heart-felt article that's worth a look. He comes down on the side of "obliquity", creating personal value, and long-term goals and quality rather than being enslaved to the measurable, quantitative, short-term goals of business and usability that dominate the profession now.
Let's move on to the tools employed by IA/UX people to define and refine the content and flow of interactive applications. How many of these do you recognise and when might they prove useful? Card Sorting, site maps, wire frames, user journeys, funnel diagrams, content audits, task models, prototyping, and so on. If you haven't recognised many of these tools perhaps you can get your company to buy a few IA/UX books or Kindle formats. There are many available that get supposedly good reviews. You can check these out at Amazon such as:
As well as information architects, jobs have asked for data architects, business architects, solution architects, technical architects and so on. Yes, I hear you, what about user experience (UX), where does this fit in? This has had an explosion of people flocking round the candle flame of UX as supply has out-stripped demand for the skills. Cennydd Bowles decries the watering down of his chosen profession and warns of the demise of UX in his 2011 Summit presentation at Colorado, The rise and fall of User Experience. It's a well thought through and heart-felt article that's worth a look. He comes down on the side of "obliquity", creating personal value, and long-term goals and quality rather than being enslaved to the measurable, quantitative, short-term goals of business and usability that dominate the profession now.
Let's move on to the tools employed by IA/UX people to define and refine the content and flow of interactive applications. How many of these do you recognise and when might they prove useful? Card Sorting, site maps, wire frames, user journeys, funnel diagrams, content audits, task models, prototyping, and so on. If you haven't recognised many of these tools perhaps you can get your company to buy a few IA/UX books or Kindle formats. There are many available that get supposedly good reviews. You can check these out at Amazon such as:
- 100 things every designer needs to know about people: what makes them tick (Voices that matter) by Susan Weinschenk, April 2011, Pub: New Riders.
- or, Communicating the User Experience: A practical Guide for Creating Useful UX Documentation by Richard Craddick and Steve Cable, Nov 2011. Pub: John Wiley & Sons.
Saturday, 4 August 2012
Business versus Creativity – is that the issue?
The new acclaim that Alfred Hitchcock's film, Vertigo, has got by being voted by the critics as the Best Film Ever, has made me wonder. See Will Gompertz's article on the BBC web site. It's over 50 years old and in fact there is only one film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, that is post 1965 in the top 10.
Well, it's the critical acclaim part that we need to consider. Traditionally, business people have had a clash with interactive media people because the business lot say the creatives don't understand business and just push the envelope of technology for their own reasons not for business reasons. There is a potential clash and we have to admit to it. The iMedia creatives want to display how well they are being innovative and using the latest tech/gizmo/software enhancement and so on. This is what they are judged on by their peers, so all should understand their drive. However, they are meant to be utilising their knowledge for the clients who have their business drivers.
There's the conundrum. Do you try to play to the critics/peers, or do you follow what is often seen as the humdrum day-to-day churn. This isn't straightforward since the clients change their opinions on what will work best for their business by seeing how innovative twists can make the difference for their competitors. Then we get to another conundrum: do the clients take a risk or do they play safe.
In the end, it seems that like attracts like. So clients that are happy to take risks in the sector are attracted to the iMedia companies that demonstrate their innovation and creativity. This will be shown by their client list, their products and by awards. Clients that want (or need) a more stable offering and are less risk-averse will seek solid companies with a reputation for delivering sound products.
Now if you as an individual are not happy with what role you are fulfilling, is it that you are not in the right company for your own drivers? Where do you fit in this conundrum?
Pity the developers of the software that (either through a programming error or a configuration error when it was set up ... just what isn't known at the moment) went spectacularly wrong for a very risk-adverse financial services client and cost them $440 million in forty minutes trading last week. See this item in The Register. Bet the fall out there is going to be awesome! This may well be considered one of the humdrum parts of our sector but the consequences show the enormous responsibilities that can weigh in. Imagine the fall-out across other financial service clients and their demands on their developers after that! Is this your company's sector? Good Luck with that.
Well, it's the critical acclaim part that we need to consider. Traditionally, business people have had a clash with interactive media people because the business lot say the creatives don't understand business and just push the envelope of technology for their own reasons not for business reasons. There is a potential clash and we have to admit to it. The iMedia creatives want to display how well they are being innovative and using the latest tech/gizmo/software enhancement and so on. This is what they are judged on by their peers, so all should understand their drive. However, they are meant to be utilising their knowledge for the clients who have their business drivers.
There's the conundrum. Do you try to play to the critics/peers, or do you follow what is often seen as the humdrum day-to-day churn. This isn't straightforward since the clients change their opinions on what will work best for their business by seeing how innovative twists can make the difference for their competitors. Then we get to another conundrum: do the clients take a risk or do they play safe.
In the end, it seems that like attracts like. So clients that are happy to take risks in the sector are attracted to the iMedia companies that demonstrate their innovation and creativity. This will be shown by their client list, their products and by awards. Clients that want (or need) a more stable offering and are less risk-averse will seek solid companies with a reputation for delivering sound products.
Now if you as an individual are not happy with what role you are fulfilling, is it that you are not in the right company for your own drivers? Where do you fit in this conundrum?
Pity the developers of the software that (either through a programming error or a configuration error when it was set up ... just what isn't known at the moment) went spectacularly wrong for a very risk-adverse financial services client and cost them $440 million in forty minutes trading last week. See this item in The Register. Bet the fall out there is going to be awesome! This may well be considered one of the humdrum parts of our sector but the consequences show the enormous responsibilities that can weigh in. Imagine the fall-out across other financial service clients and their demands on their developers after that! Is this your company's sector? Good Luck with that.
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