A lesson in client servicing an application development project
We recently completed our first integration with an external customer website and our e-commerce website. (By "integration," I mean an API in which we pass configured product data from our site to a 3rd party shopping cart.) What ensued was an interesting learning experience for myself and our group of developers on the project.
Everybody has their own development process
Standards are hard to come by in the web application/development world and the process for managing development projects is certainly no different.
Case in point: We created a technical specification for an API and worked with developers on our own team spanning 3 different time zones. Add on top of this that our technical specification was an "ideal world" document which didn't account for specific requirements of the external website we were to interface with. This meant further coordinating our simultaneous development of our API with the integration of the API (as we were building it). This essentially equated to "building the plane as we flew it."
Agile development is great...but falls flat on its face when involving people outside the core team
In an agile software development world, code is written, tested, and released in several mini-stages. This methodology allows for us to be very open, flexible, and speedy with new development on our various web properties.
However, my takeaway from this project is that I would utilize a different approach when interfacing with external developers that are not part of the core team...taking me back to my agency roots when educating our clients about "our process." What we found is that our process didn't at all align with the customer's process for development, testing/QA, and release management. In fact, it caused a lot of tension between the two groups throughout the project -- especially in the home stretch.
Where we normally operate in a lean environment with small release gaps and short testing periods, the external party we interfaced with was accustomed to a more traditional waterfall model of building the entire application up front, test all of it at once, and going through several iterations of testing & debugging of all code at the very last stage.
Lesson learned: Provide a visual map of your process and timing
Multiple lessons were learned on this project:
1.) Provide a "site map" of the intended integration. This allows business stakeholders to visually understand where the API "handshake" occurs between the sites. It also empowers the external QA team to understand the bigger picture so they can see which areas need testing.
2.) Provide a map of the major components of the development project, timing on each, and the order in which they will be developed. Seems simple, but when you don't manage the external developers, keeping tabs on the timeline proves difficult.
3.) Schedule regular daily meetings to check in on status and even if there's no updates to report, it provides a crutch for the collective team to lean on so everybody remains on the same page (in terms of timing & expectations). Morning meetings are important so the day doesn't get away from either party. This is particularly helpful in the final weeks/days of the project.
Business and IT: A Love/Hate Relationship. But why?
As I've transitioned from the marketing department as a web marketing manager to the IT department as an application/development manager, to my now current role of senior IT manager, I've gradually moved up the food chain of strategy conversations with both the internal business, customers, and vendors. The constant theme in all of these discussions whenever IT is brought up? Resources (or lack thereof) and the roadblock IT is viewed as to growing the business.
Is every IT department eternally busy?
I don't understand it. Well, actually, I do, but I'll say "I don't understand" just to make it sound like I'm in more disbelief than I really am. The underlying theme of every conversation I've had with a customer, vendor, or otherwise is that IT is busy and doesn't have the resources. It seems as if any project requiring IT resources automatically gets held up in the "IT vortex" of priorities. IT departments are really not this busy.
The IT prioritization issue
Something is fundamentally wrong when IT resources are scheduled 9-12 months out. My gut feel is that what the business is being held responsible to do compared to what IT is being scheduled to do is at times, misaligned. This is not necessarily the fault of IT but rather the business leaders (in which IT should have a seat at the table).
From an operations and manufacturing perspective, we automatically know that it's standard procedure to have a lengthy-but-calculated process for launching new products to the market. Yet, there's perhaps somewhat less frustration with operations & manufacturing on these timelines compared to the frustration I commonly witness with IT scheduling. How can this be?
The business doesn't understand IT
Business users simply don't understand what they can't see. Operations and manufacturing have the luxury of producing physical products and business users can see the progress of this development and can visually comprehend the effort that's put into a product launch.
The challenge for IT leaders is to visualize the various IT processes, illustrate how they plug into the rest of the organization, and be viewed as an ally to projects and not a barrier to entry. It pains me to think how many projects are killed in the course of 12 months because IT resources are required.
Business users need a scorecard for IT projects
Business users need help -- they can't be faulted for not understanding IT, their lack of understanding is on the shoulders of IT leaders. Business users need a scorecard to appropriately rate their projects. There will be some things that internal IT cannot do in the amount of time required. But this doesn't mean "kill the project!" It may mean outsourcing the project to another firm under the guidance of IT.
Unfortunately, many IT shops are one of the following:
- Run as if all IT-related ideas should be their own. This translates to extended timelines and lost time-to-market as IT puts the stops on a project because it wasn't "their idea."
- Operated under the watchful eye of a CFO. This translates to IT operating under the perception that "spending money = bad".
What's an IT leader to do?
- Openly share your project pipeline (disguising projects that are sensitive, if necessary). The business as a whole needs to understand what projects are in the pipeline. If they don't, they will approach you without any context to why your team is so busy -- which is a problem.
- Openly share the methodology for prioritizing projects with the business users who are submitting the requests. This will help them understand the process so that when they come to you with future projects, they will be armed the right data...and not with a preconceived notion that the project will "take a while" because "IT is always busy." Knowing the "why" behind project prioritization goes a long way.
- Accept the fact that you are not all-knowing. It's OK for business users to come to IT with a new idea. You're responsibility is leveraging technology to solve business problems and bringing their idea to life. Without you, it's just an unrealized idea.
- Spending money is not a bad thing. If you report to the CFO, the CFO is not against spending money. The CFO views business differently and is looking at the return on investment (ROI). If you cannot put in requests for money which outline the ROI, then be prepared to have many of your projects denied.
- Don't forget to position yourself as a "go to" person.
Custom Product Configurator API
This month we launched an industry first: we have built a custom product configurator API. We have teamed with American Blinds, the largest online retailer of window treatments, to put the API in production with the launch of our previously-mentioned custom draperies program.
The B2B benefit
The API allows American Blinds to effectively "shake hands" with our product configurator enabling online ordering of custom draperies from Levolor without having to do any product programming. This enables us as the manufacturer to focus on effectively managing the hundreds of billions of configuration possibilities with our custom product lines while American Blinds focuses on the marketing of the products to their consumers -- essentially the best of both worlds.
Here are screen shots of the experience:
The American Blinds Curtains & Draperies landing page:
The Levolor Draperies landing page on AmericanBlinds.com:
Now entering the Levolor.com product configurator:
The completed configuration passed back to the American Blinds shopping cart via the API:
The American Blinds checkout process with a Levolor configured product sent via the API:
The B2C benefit
The benefit to consumers is a seamless experience as they are passed unknowingly from server-to-server with no interruption in navigation. To them, it is like picking up another product sample book in the store. At the time of purchase, regardless of products they have in their cart, they still go through the same checkout line for a completely seamless purchasing experience.
Automatically monitor changes to competitor websites for free
It's fairly easy to cost-effectively monitor your brand names and trademarked terms (and anything else you'd like to keep tabs on) using Google's Blog search RSS feeds (and several other aggregator service RSS feeds). When you don't have the funds (or a low volume of online/blog conversations pertaining to your brand) for a service like BuzzLogic or BuzzMetrics, it's about as "grass roots" as you can get.
But what if you want to automatically monitor changes to your competitors' websites that don't have feeds built into them?
Page2RSS is the answer.
Page2RSS is a free service which creates an RSS feed out of any URL you enter into the site. Their free service creates a cached version of the page every 4 hours. Simply subscribe to the RSS feed and off you go -- be the first to know when your competitors update their homepage, product pages within their sites, and so on.
An entrepreneurial evening
I had an opportunity to catch up with a friend of mine this evening over drinks/dinner before he and his fiance move off to Colorado to continue building their online startup: foodzie.com. Foodzie is one of 10 very fortunate and well-deserving startups that will receive seed money and mentoring from some of the industry's finest all thanks to TechStars.
The premise behind foodzie is to provide artisan food producers with the means for selling their products online with minimal investment. On top of that, foodzie will build a community of "foodies" who will have an opportunity for "one stop shopping" online. Their site will be launching soon (presumably in beta after they settle into their new digs in Colorado) and I'm very excited to see how it will take off.
Not being a die-hard "foodie" myself, my wife and I are certainly more of a "mass consumer" at heart as we purchase based on ease and convenience due to our busy schedules. That being said, foodzie presents an opportunity for even non-foodies like us to indulge in the latest in greatest without having to be die-hard foodies. Whenever business models like these come to fruition and take a complex process, make it simple, and bring it to the masses, it is a recipe for success.
It was a great change of pace to talk entrepreneurial strategy -- which is a completely different type of discussion than the day-to-day enterprise strategy discussion.
Good luck to Rob and Emily on their venture!
Blog by Eric Long
I'm an experienced online marketer, information architect, digital strategist, and social media enthusiast. I'm passionate about providing outstanding cross-channel experiences for considered purchases (with a focus on mass customization).
About Eric Long
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