Things we could do better
July 29, 2009 | 1:18 pm
Our little company has grown an awful lot over the last five and a half years. We have beautiful office space close to downtown Halifax. We're now three people. I've been lucky to have speaking opportunities all over Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, although I'd like to have the chance to do more of this elsewhere in Canada and Internationally. We have tremendous partners and have had great opportunities with Colour, Shoreline Consulting, Nocturnal Design, ISL and many more.
But, I know that while certain aspects of our business are flourishing, there are things we could be doing better, and I want our friends and clients to know that we're working on them so that we can become an even better design and development shop.
First off is project management. I've always had a pretty good handle on time management, but as the size and scope of our projects increases, I've realized that it's no longer possible for me to do this all in my head. We already use Basecamp, but it's mainly been for convenience, not project management and I think I'm going to change this in the near term. The obvious subsequent step for us is to bring on a project manager, and I can see this being likely in the next year. I would see this person having a hybrid role that puts them somewhere between new business development, client relations and project management. Don't worry though, you'll still have access to the people who actually do your work. I think this is one of the benefits of working with a smaller firm.
The next thing we could do better is front end development. We've always been pretty up on the latest wave of CSS, JavaScript libraries and HTML/XHTML, but I feel like I've lost touch a bit with where HTML 5 is going and I want to get on top of it to ensure that we are future proofing all of the sites we do.
The next thing we have more to learn on is Flash. We do a reasonable amount of Flash work, but I'm still the most knowledgeable when it comes to Actionscript in the office, and I would like my team to be more up on coding and what Flash is capable of so that we can really start to do some leading edge work in this area. I still think Flash has great applications as part of an overall web strategy, it's not meant for building complete sites. I also want to transition our team into AS3, as we primarily work in AS2 now.
Finally, our biggest stumbling block is capacity. We push an incredible amount of work through here for a small shop, but in order to do that, I often start work at 5 am and knock off sometime around 10 or 11 pm. Obviously, this is neither healthy or productive. Plus, my family misses me.
Look for some big changes coming this Fall as I try to address our shortcomings and make Brightwhite the best boutique design and development agency it can be.
If you have suggestions for how we might continue to progress and grow, or ideas on how you've done it, I'd welcome them in the comments, or drop me an email. Thanks.
project management and growing pains
Jeff,
I have many similar hopes and plans for my own company and so it was interesting to read your road map. Project management is a big issue for me too, now that we're up to three employees and I'm trying to figure out how to increase capacity. I'm also looking to maybe bring on a PM, biz dev and cleint relations, but also someone with some production capacity.
It's about finding the right people, that's what I've found in my limited run in having employees...then they fill in the gaps.
I've been looking into an online PM and CRM all-in-one tool called Solve 360 by Norada out of Calgary. I'm only just starting so I have no definitive recommendation yet. But it promises to be way better than Basecamp.
I'm really trying to experiment with delegating lots of tasks, including client follow-up, to my employees, and it's very empowering. I don't come close to your long days (5am to 10pm ouch! I thought your computer time stamp was just mistakenly set to the UK or something...!) but you're right it's not healthy. The best thing for the company is for the main guy to stay healthy.
Nice! It sounds like some
Nice! It sounds like some good stuff is coming for you guys.
honesty
Great honesty Jeff,
nice to see upfront public face of a company. Very refreshing.
Craig
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