Thoughts on Versioning
This one comes from Anton, our esteemed Project Manager --
One of the central concerns for each of BD's clients is that their projects be delivered on time, and within budget. There are plenty of reasons why client and design firm both seek to avoid delays and extensions to projects, but it is easily summarized by stating simply that everyone seeks to avoid the dreaded Scope Creep.
Anyone who has been involved with a larger-sized technology project will be familiar with...
the following scenario, or one very much like it: The client sends a list of fixes, most of which are within scope.Amongst this list, however, is an innocent request for an easy extra feature, or perhaps a little change to the layout - nothing major, nothing to even get very excited about at all. Since you're making the other changes already, and it's really not that big deal, you say okay, that's cool, and do it.
That little change, which is much appreciated for its coming so late in the game, leads the client to realize that maybe they don't like the logo, or maybe they would like to not have drop-downs in the nav, but rather would like to display their content another way, and could you just make one more change? It's okay if the website launches a
couple of days later, they'd really just like to see those new changes... You can just go ahead and add it on the bill, it's just a couple of extra hours... A few simple changes later, you're suddenly in possession of a product that not only has grown beyond its initial concept, due to all of the extra resources spent on "little fixes," it may have also grown well beyond its initial budget!
The first step on the road to avoidance of this ugly scenario is to establish a clear system of versioning for whatever it is we're setting out to make. Whether it be a website, an email campaign, a newsletter, whatever. Give it a name, date, number - anything to give the project a cogent working title. This makes it much easier to then
define what is to be delivered, which means putting together the list of features for a website, knowing the sale items and terms for the email campaign, and deciding which articles will make it into this month's newsletter. In some cases, the answers to these resultant queries are thankfully simple and self-explanatory. In the case of
more complex projects though, the answering of these questions can raise important and timely questions regarding Information Architecture, Ad Sales, Marketing, and even adherence to Business Goals. Therefore, versioning becomes a vital first step in defining
scope.
It's not all just busywork to serve the interests of managers, though.
- effective documentation helps make better products. One benefit which flows immediately forth from tightly defining scope in the planning phase of a large project is that it forces the kind of editorial process which inspires the removal of unnecessary features from the product's design. This kind of revision by necessity of budget and calendar yields designs which are cleaner, more functional, less frivolous, true to business goals and requirements, and delivered on time.