Templates available for digital project management

Once your processes and procedures are defined, they can be codified into templates to help guide the next generation of your project managers. They should be refined according to your own business practices and experiences and then they act as efficiently and useful as they can be for YOU.

It’s so refreshing to find templates because they can save so much time and energy, as long as they really suit the way you work. They can cut out major headaches analysing what has proved most successful for you. The sticking point is suit the way you work. You still need to adapt them but they can be strong pointers in a right direction. They can serve as a sounding board for checking if you have analysed your way of working without missing out any of the stages.

Often the processes and procedures you are applying are rooted in your company’s high-level approach to managing projects and these in turn are often affected by your market sector. These approaches often relate to the methodology of waterfall, agile or Prince2 project management processes. Can you identify what you are using? Maybe your company uses all of these for different projects according to the client’s needs. Maybe you use a combination of these approaches in one project – this seems to be a trend because the different approaches have their own strengths and weaknesses. We can’t go into this here but you can look up our blogs on the three different approaches or take a squint at: Project Management Methodologies: How do they compare? by Jean Scheid (19/9/12).

Here then are some templates to look at. Some are free, some are not, some are market sector specific, some are software driven. But they do act as a high-level guide to managing projects. They can be used as a sounding board within your company and/or for refining your own processes. Get other people from your company to react to them. Start a business conversation with them. This will be embryonic training in the raw where you’ll do your own needs analysis. Good Luck.

• Free Project Management Templates from Project Management Informed Soloutions
• Project Smart’s Templates and Tools
• eConsultancy’s Digital Marketing Template Files
• Smartsheet’s Project Management Template

Content marketing and the print versus infographics debate

We’ve all come across the mantra ‘content is king’ but have we really understood what that implies in the digital world? Yes, we understand that consumers skim and scan online information more than printed mediums. Their behaviour has changed, driven by the need to make faster decisions whilst faced with masses of available data. Another mantra we’ve come across is ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ but that has been hard to prove until now.

Enter the ‘infographic’: a structured visual analysis of a lot of information presented in a visual way. These might look easy to understand and relate to, but they represent a lot of hard analysis of data and the facility to represent this graphically. These are increasingly important skills that have been neglected. Infographics don’t come cheap but they can pay for themselves in the number of people who look at them, the time spent with them and the number of recommendations they get for others to look at them. All these aspects ring the bells for content marketers.

Take for example Accenture’s Infographic of their report for ‘Turbulence for the CMO: Charting a path for the seamless customer experience’, which is based on their survey in 2012 of CMO Insights. We’ll draw your attention to point number 3, 65% of CMOs say digital focus of the company is important but only 7% sat their performance is leading edge. And, point 5 where they want to drive digital orientation throughout the company but 16% meet internal barriers. Equally, apart from those stats and what they mean to us in the digital industry, the medium of the infographic itself is significant. There’s a good deal of synthesis of data presented graphically.

The principle that you need to ‘entertain and educate’ with your content was strongly expressed in the 2013 Content and Marketing Show as discussed in Quba’s blog 12th November, ‘Entertainment, Eyeballs and Personas: insights from the 2013 Content and Marketing Show’.

Doesn’t the concept of infographics (also referred to as data visualisations) meet this principle if handled correctly? Just look at the buzz around Time & Space Visualiser: The story and history of Doctor Who as data visualisations, a book by Paul Smith about Dr. Who that has been controversial for its comedic look and feel (infographic?). Isn’t it designed to entertain and educate?

Where is this leading? Well, Shell Robshaw-Bryan has strong views in her analysis of ‘9 Marketing Insights to Drive Online Success in 2014’, 28th Oct. 2013, where her 9th point emphasises creativity, agility and innovation are needed to grab and hold the attention of audiences. Would infographics fit here? Actually they might help answer some of her other points too – all worth noting.

The rise of ‘Instagram’ and ‘Pinterest’ as social media offshoots is causing a stir in marketing circles too. Instagram is more visually driven while Pinterest lends itself better to sharing visuals than Tweets allowed. There are interesting stats on these at Digit*ally, where more infographics are evident on the Content Marketing page.

However, to be fair, we will try to place the push for infographics in a wider context by mentioning that print content is not dead. Quocirca Insights, November 1st, cover ‘Print Renaissance’, in this digital world. Tangibility, Trust, Retention and Digital Integration are cited as strong reasons for not throwing print out with the bath water. After all, we are print-biased here, as you see, so how could we not promote the balance?

Language? What language?

A long time ago, in a locality far, far away, a group of sixth-form maths students were let loose on the local authority's mainframe computer. Since this was a time when the Beatles were still in the recording studio, there wasn't much choice of programming language. In our case it was FORTRAN 4. This language was designed to fit on punched cards and the syntax was geared to the restrictions that brought.

Actually, it was somewhat amazing that the local council's mainframe ran FORTRAN, since that was the language of the mathematicians and scientists (it had built-in support for complex numbers!). The 'proper' use of the computer was to 'count brooms' and run the payroll, and for that it would have almost certainly used COBOL. As I said, the choice of programming languages in the late 1960s was small. (See the Wikipedia history of them.)

Fast forward to today and while the boxes have shrunk the choice of languages has rocketed (and Fortran is still alive and updating although it has lost its capitalisation, as is COBOL).

I came across several surveys which rank computer programming languages. The way they define is broadly similar (some count SQL, some not ... something to do with infinite loops) but how they get the ranking varies. Here you can find out what's hot and what's not, and possibly tailor your training or hiring policies.

The TIOBE Programming Community Index for October 2013 uses a complicated analysis of appearances in web searches. Their top-5 for last month is C, Java, Objective-C, C++ and PHP, with PHP having moved up one since September to displace C#. Fortran (25th) and COBOL (20th with a bullet) are still hanging in there.

Langpop.com also trawls search engine results together with Craigslist postings, Ohloh and Github. Their top-5 ranking is C, Java, PHP, Javascript and C++. The web site engine allows you to try different searches for the ranking, so that using Github alone you get a top-5 of ObjectiveC, JavaScript, Ruby, Java and Python ... reflecting the more hardcore nature of Github.

Finally (in my straw trawl) came Statistic Brain. This particular listing isn't bang up to date but it provides an interesting comparison between Craigslist (listing programmer jobs ie wants) and SourceForge (listing open source projects ie users). The wants top-5 are PHP, SQL, C++, C and JavaScript ... and the user list is Java, C++, C, PHP and Perl. Other lists show that Perl is losing popularity so that ranking should definitely have changed and C# or JavaScript would probably be in that top-5 now.

Do these stats fit your experience? If someone on your staff asks you what to learn next what would you say? A final word goes to Craig Buckler on Sitepoint. He looked at this very question at the beginning of 2013 and concluded

Ultimately, pick technologies which interest you and never stop learning. Programming skills are always transferable and it'll make you a better candidate when a suitable job eventually arises.

Interactive Media Awards: what do they tell us

The range and type of awards offered in the industry reflect the activities and trends of work. It’s a snap-shot of what’s going on and what is considered ‘good’. With this in mind, we’ve taken a quick look at some of the major players for the UK.

What’s readily apparent is the massive increase in categories that you can enter. This demonstrates the growth of interactive media use across traditional sectors. Imagine, The Interactive Media Awards now has 100 categories (and growing) that they divide into 25 per quarter of the year. If you can’t find a category to enter there for your projects, we’d be amazed. The award categories are mostly arranged around traditional content sectors of business, such as Bridal/Weddings, Government, Financial Services and Animals/Wildlife although some of the categories like e-commerce and web design/development seem more about the medium. Other awarding bodies choose to define the categories in other ways.

BIMA (British Interactive Media Association) has recently had its 2013 awards event and you can see that they divide their categories into Sector, Discipline and Premium with 24 subcategories. These cover:, Battle of the Brands, Business to business, Corporate, Education and Outreach, Entertainment, Leisure and Culture, and Public Life, as Sectors. Then Community Building, Content Marketing, Engagement, Games, Integrated Campaign, Mashups and Data Visualisation, Mobile, Multi-platform, Self Promotion, Social Media, Student, Tablet, User Experience, make up the Discipline categories. Finally Innovation, Minor Miracle, Agency of the Year and Grand Prix cover the Premium categories.

FWA (Favourite Website Awards) is based in Cambridge and runs daily, monthly and annual awards for web sites based on the judging criteria of creativity, originality, design, content and personality. The daily and monthly judging leads to a public vote for the Winner of the year. Their site is updated daily and they have lots of followers worldwide.

Only you will know what angle your company favours; whether creativity or transparent interface, well-structured content or in-your-face bombardment. So much depends on your clients, their needs, the proposed audience etc. That’s why defining categories for awards is no easy feat. Just think about what you’d put as criteria and categories. How would you set criteria that judges would agree on? It’s easy to write off these awards as irrelevant to you, but they pin down standards as a result of what they do – and you shouldn’t ignore that.

Look at some of the winners in the categories that suit your type of work. Do they inspire or frustrate? A good way to change perceptions if you don’t agree with the results is to back your own work and enter. Good luck.

Interactive media testing: who, what, where, how

As with all other areas of interactive development, testing has exploded into a specialism of its own, but this comes with some baggage because specialists expect some kind of career progression. It appears that the tradition for testers has been to transfer out sideways after a couple of years into development or project management. With the emphasis from clients being on proven performance of interactive products, myriad test results have become important in demonstrating your company’s worth. So a drain on your experienced testers is less tolerable now.

What do we know about testers? This is exactly what Chris George addresses in his posting at The Ministry of Testing in, Testing: an Obvious Career Choice (20.10.13). He’s realised that the many automated tests breed boredom and so testers move. His answer is to educate testers to demonstrate that there is a skills progression across sectors of testing by using a skills map. He has reached other conclusions too, so it’s worth a look at the map and analysis of his findings.

Rob Lambert at The Social Tester (18.10.13), seems to agree about boredom for testers and automated testing but his answer is to throw in challenges. This begins a dialogue on,’who are testers and what is their position in iMedia development?’

If you think you know about testing categories and what tests to recommend to your clients, take a look at Website Testing and the tools they review over 19 categories! We’ll let their list blow your mind! . Their checklists for testing are handy too. We lead you to their ecommerce checklist here, but there are others. These cover the ‘what to test’ and ‘where’.

Well, there’s just the ‘how’ to address now. Automation is rife as we’ve understood from ‘Testing Web Sites’, but there’s a mixed solution to some aspects of testing because user testing involves real people and real situations/cases. This has become partially automated too but that can point you to faster solutions for management and clients while taking you outside the purely automated box. User Testing.com specialise in online user testing that gives you fast-taste feedback. Yes, they are pushing themselves and their service but their client reaction including large brands is enviable. See www.usertesting.com/buzz.

Just to end on a bit of humour, Gerald Thulbourn berates PayPal (calls them ‘muppets’ repeatedly) for neglecting to do their own testing on some of their own sample code whilst warning others that changes they are making might affect their previous coding!

Funding and competitions for you

Last month saw the launch of a new set of funding opportunities for the creative industries from the UK Technology Strategy Board (TSB). The question has always been, ‘Yes, but what are the creative industries and are we considered part of it?’. Interesting point. In the past these initiatives have appeared to favour traditional visually-driven sectors. The definition debate continues across countries apparently. (See Wikipedia’s take on the definition debate as an introduction).

But because of convergence - and maybe even dominance - across the digital media sectors, the aspects that the strategy addresses have finally crossed over to more purist digital media. If you have got lost in the debate before, as we have, take a deep breath and be prepared to look afresh.

Listed on the TSB web site there’s:

• £15 million for cross-platform production in digital media (although the slant appears towards film, TV, online video, animation, video games and special effects.)
• £2.5 million for ‘Frictionless Commerce’ – collaborative projects covering digital transaction environments for content industries.
• £2.5 million for hyperlocal media demonstrators for geographical communities
• £4 million for location-based services for businesses to get their customers into the ‘here and now’ context.
• £2.5 million for valuing and pricing digital assets in digital transactions.
• £3.5 million for ‘big data exploration’ meaning finding new ways of extracting value from data.
• £1 million to help Manchester creative industries cluster.

Well, it is in the right general direction, don’t you think? This funding and the competitions across these areas begin late 2013 and continue into 2014. For a stake in the first (and largest) and the second you need to register interest quite quickly in November. The others weigh-in during late 2013 and early 2014. Now, don’t forget that the project management of funded projects like these is heavy because there’s usually lots more admin than on strictly commercial projects. Also, UK government bodies often ask for Prince 2 qualified project management as a basis. Do you have people qualified in this? We’ve covered Prince 2 aspects and developments before so check out previous blogs.

If you’re tempted, good luck. Remember, you learn a lot along the journey which increases your skills and experience. We all need that.

Evaluation of web sites – what is this?

Evaluation is such a problematic word because it implies testing according to criteria but covers wider ‘softer’ issues as well. Everyone who looks at a web site tablet, mobile app, or any electronically delivered information, is subconsciously judging what they meet. Our problem as developers is to be on top of general evaluation criteria as well as be aware of more specialised market-driven information. Some aspects of evaluation such as accessibility are linked to legal requirements, so we have to conform to those anyway. We’ll not be looking at accessibility specifically here as we tend to treat evaluation for that separately.

Perhaps we should start with a definition of evaluation. It is about judging or assessing the value of something in a structured way. Under a general evaluation appraisal, we can find guides for assessing web sites that emphasise looking out for: authority, accuracy, reliability, being up-to-date, relevance to you, feel (University of Reading). The University of Berkeley, Evaluating web pages, offers similar advice covering techniques and questions to pose about web pages for evaluating them. So, we may have education graduates worldwide who have been trained to evaluate our pages. It might be useful for your clients to understand these general criteria as some of the criteria relate more to actions of theirs for keeping the information current.

But the great majority of people do not employ a common set of criteria when assessing information. They employ subconscious criteria according to their age, need, behaviour trends, and more. This is where market research extends the measures for evaluation. It offers insights of how to tailor the information and experience better for a particular group.

Then we get more precise guidelines of how to engineer information electronically for particular needs. Take for example Kantar Media’s September 2013’s publication on, Over 50s in the digital age, where they define the over 50s behaviour trends with electronic information giving valuable pointers of how to reach this group and how to engage them better. If you remain sceptical can you argue with Webcredible’s success results (if they are true, of course!).

• 36% increase in made-to-order in online revenues for Laura Ashley
• 50% reduction in mobile homepage drop-offs for Macmillan Cancer Research
• 44% conversion improvement and 168% uplift in leads for Propertywide
• 80% increase in hotel ‘look-to-book’ conversions for Thomson

Perhaps stats like that may influence your clients to agree to some market research, or it might help you define some criteria of successful evaluation for your own sites.