Design kickoffs are great, it’s the start of the project, expectations are high, ideas are thrown around liberally and everyone is excited about what’s to come. So why should you bring along the person responsible fo database tables and code no one will ever see?
Get to know the business #
Invitations to tender and design briefs are very useful documents to get an initial idea of what a business does and what they offer. You may even be able to gather some useful information from their existing website, or you may not and that maybe the reason you’ve been brought in.
Having attended many kickoff meetings now it has become obvious to me that you only really get to know the goals of a business when you speak to those that work there.
As an example the company streamline may be “We provide widget X to 90% of the industry” but when you speak to the web team the real problem is embedding YouTube videos means copy and pasting embed code into a text box. You aren’t hired to try and sell more widgets, you are there to help the web team be able to sell more widgets.
Overall knowledge of project #
“We want to modernise the look and feel of our current site and make it responsive” this may be the driving force behind project but more than likely there are many other goals that the client has in mind that can easily be accomplished within scope and budget.
I can guarantee that in the meeting someone will jokingly complain about a current process that they have to go through that can easily be automated in the new project. When offering a solution to the client it is always met with a smile and a comment such as “that would save me so much time”.
Having a broader idea of the whole project can also help you set up for potential future work. Somethings may be identified that can’t fit in the current timescale but you can build in the foundations that will allow future updates to be made.
Possible technical hurdles #
Whilst I love the excitement a new project brings it can be the case that enthusiasm takes over a little and it can be an excellent time to spot any potential technical hurdles that are flagged up. I have been on plenty of projects where it’s casually mentioned that content lives in this system or the data needs to be sent to another place for a contact database.
Some companies may have certain limitations on the technologies they wish to use. They may only want to use their own servers or a certain application stack to allow for easy integration with other services they use.
Forming a relationship #
As I work for Headscape, who are an agency, rather than an in house team forming a relationship with clients early on is highly valuable for a good working relationship.
Once the kickoff is done I rarely see the client again face to face. We do however normally have at least a weekly meeting on Skype or GoTo Meeting. Having met in person I always find it helps these calls as you can at least picture the people and their mannerisms. In every project I’ve done the calls always have a friendlier tone to them after having met.
Gets me out for the day #
Us backend developers may be stereotyped as shy people who want to sit in a room with no social interaction but if you are in two minds as to wether you should take your backend developer along to the design kickoff meeting I hope the above will convince you that it will really help the project if you do.