Notes of the novice project manager on the client side
Most of the materials on Habré are devoted to people working in IT companies. However, people close to IT are not only in specialized offices - on the side of the customer there are also enthusiastic people who love and understand modern technologies.
I want to share with you how I did my first, really big project; to talk about rakes, difficulties and some hacks that I managed to realize. Today I will not talk about technology as such - more and more I will talk about processes.
I apologize to the community for errors in the text. As I did not try to raise my literacy level, I didn’t succeed. I corrected most of the mistakes thanks to the Word. If you intelligently tell me about the rest - I will be very grateful to you.
I have been in the industry for more than a year, in different positions, in different companies. And how many times people could not answer the question - and why the hell they, in fact, the site - not count.
')
Mistress note! If the bosses tell you to make a site, but they don’t know why, discourage them until the last, call the maximum estimates of terms and budgets, ask how the resource will be profitable. The fact is that in the absence of profit from the resource may ask you!
In our case, everything is simple: the old site was on Parcer. And because of the attempts to save hours at a not very cheap contractor (after all, everyone understands that you will find a person with Parser knowledge of FIG) the project gradually turned into a zombie. Well, or so it seemed to us. And we needed a sea of fresh functionality, a change in the design and programming language on which the site was written.
We decided that it would definitely be easier to write a new site.
All our previous sites were made by large companies with well-known names. Therefore, I decided that we would be looking for a contractor in the first half of the runet rating. But not in Moscow. So most often it is cheaper.
It is on this occasion that I met with considerable administrative resistance. Despite the fact that we are a wholesale company working with all of Russia and some CIS countries, no one wants to have a contractor several thousand kilometers out of some subjective considerations.
The question resolved the following remark: “Why do you need a contractor in Moscow? Will you break his knees in case of a delay? ”
Mistress note! In fact, there is a sense in close proximity to the studio: all those in charge can come to your office, look at the goods, talk with all your managers, understand more deeply the requirements of your business. In principle, your business trip to the developer's habitat can improve the situation of immersing a studio in your business. But I did not manage to verify this.
The next important place for me was the flexibility of the company. Due to the nature of the market, we needed instant responses to our wishes, not answers in a month. And then I remembered the magic word Agile, intriguing and mysterious.
Mistress note! In fact, flexible methodologies only lead to the fact that you invest money in a project more efficiently, no less (an ejayl studio is much harder to push into redoing what you didn’t like, for free), but more effectively.
Studio we chose. Some keyword searches will allow you to easily understand what kind of studio it is.
A project is like a child: first you dream about it, make plans about how cute it will be, how all your friends will praise him and set an example to their projects; then you find the studio with which you are going to create this project. And here begins one of the most enjoyable processes - conception.
You, together with your colleagues and the studio's project manager, generate ideas, estimate budgets, make absolutely crazy plans.
Mistress note! Tell the project to the studio, what kind of company you have, what kind of products you sell, give him (or better everyone involved in the project) something cool from his assortment. Make the studio love you and your company!
Here I can not give any special advice on design methods. Mindmaps are great at work. Whiteboard is a great helper.
What about the characters. I can not say that we used this method deeply (there’s probably no studio habit, or they didn’t see the need), but just for myself, I highly recommend you to create 2-3 characters. This will help prioritize your delightful ideas.
Mistress note! Approve ideas from all interested parties. First of all, those who are engaged in real sales. As a result, they bring the company money and have the greatest weight. If you explain how this or that thought is useful for them, no matter how things are, they will let you realize it.
The wholesale fashion for interactive prototypes appeared not so long ago - a couple of years ago. The prototype is a good thing. He solves two problems at once: designing the interaction and visual aids. In principle, the prototype can in some way replace the technical task. And most importantly, there is every chance that your superiors will get acquainted with it (even if just looking at you from the back), unlike the technical task. At this point, you can resolve all major "alternative" questions about the site.
Mistress note! If you were given a project without a prototype with a 120 page specification, and the page thumbnails are made by tables in Word, do not be lazy, draw it all on a piece of paper. On a big piece of paper. That way A2. Straight pages in miniature, from buttons / links arrows to other pages. The pictures may look like a daub of a preschooler child. This is not the main thing, but the main thing is that you will understand the logic of the work of the resource. And you will probably find a mistake. Write TK more than 20 pages and at the same time keep it logical and unmistakable - a titanic work that not everyone can do.
At the prototype stage, it is extremely important not to forget anything and torment the studio to the last. If you don’t do this, it will be bad for everyone: you, the manager on the studio side, and the developers. Each in its own way, but each of your sclerosis, the lazy thought "A, and dick with him" will result in hemorrhoids for all involved in the process. And above all for you!
I’m all decaying about how to work with studios, draw diagrams, talk the teeth to the manager. But the most important thing you have to do is prepare all the materials for your part. And then the thicker the guerrillas, the thicker the forest. The main problems are content, of course. In our case, more than 2,000 product items: a bunch of brands, collections, photos.
This is a huge layer of information, a bunch of photos, links, materials, and for all this someone must be responsible.
Worst of all, when you change the areas of responsibility within the company.
Here we have for the availability of goods on the site answered your humble servant. I wrote letters that you need to add the product to the site. Unloading from 1s was done, photos were molded in three formats and clung to the site with a special script. Problems appeared even at the stage of setting the task for me. Further, in general, it was a complete horror.
Everybody got hung up when, in the absence of goods, everyone and no one are to blame ... Then we decided: let everything be taken from 1s! The party said - cool, Komsomol answered - yes! The men, as usual, thought - we need such an honor on the dick ?!
The fact is that the peasants (mostly in the appearance of lovely ladies) did not smile at all at bringing in the database of information. This is TIME! And they come to the warehouse one by one!
And the person following 1c did not believe at all that lovely ladies would manage to maintain order in such a wild variety of fields.
But in the end everything was agreed.
Another hitch is connected with the very curious integration of the site with 1c through an intermediate MS SQL database.
Mistress note! As soon as you do something nonstandard, and technical specialists from different sides of the agreement are linked in this - wait for problems.
In fact, you can't really send either your techies or studio techies. Because on the one hand it threatens you with an increase in future estimates at the expense of unpredictable risks, and on the other hand simply spoiled relations with the technical director. After all, it is up to him to evaluate all your ideas from the technical side and tell the authorities about their viability.
Be dodgy, be soft, be hard, sing, drink, press, swear, ask. Your task is to launch a working project. If your decisions hurt someone's ChSV, then buy him a bottle of brandy. And buy a bottle for yourself (better than three), because your ChSV will be touched more than once or twice.
Mistress note! BECOME A RELIABLE TIME TO PERFORM THE WORK REQUIRED! If necessary, put in a copy of all those interested.
Well, then how? If you have been in the industry for more than three years and regularly read the right resources, you generally know what it is all about.
Mistress note! The designer must love your project. This is noticeable in detail: how detailed and unusually the icons are, how the small elements are selected. I believe that it is quite acceptable to reject the layout due to the lack of designer love for it. From the second or third attempt love will appear;)
So we got to the fun. That is what we were preparing for six months. The stage of programming has begun. Childbirth is close. Now everyone is torturing you, from the studio to HR, who wants to post vacancies to a new site. And you pass on the top of the studio manager. And so it will be a month and a half.
Exactly now all the holes in the TZ will be flown out, the budget deficit, deadlines due to the fact that they have forgotten sensibly to evaluate some function. Some sort of facs will happen.
The guys started to set up integration with our server, almost the first day there was no light in the office ... not at all. Then there was a move - two days the server did not work at all. Another week they worked through one place. At that moment, I urgently needed to go to another city for a few days.
Mistress note! From the phone it is quite possible to steer the process even from another city: connect to MS SQL, the remote terminal, call via Skype. Sucks only design accept. Better do it on a normal monitor. Well, if you are not in your hometown, take care of roaming packages. MegaFon, for example, has the package “Everywhere Moscow”.
During the production phase, managers are divided into three types - tihuny, smileys and senders. Now I am talking about three types of managers with whom you can work, and eventually get a working draft. Assholes in the subspecies, I will not allocate.
Tikhuna They go deep underground, call every couple of weeks (always at the wrong time) to ask some question on the functionality (some trifle you hardly remember), with some deadlines come and pass the project. Ready to do some things. Generally, when they come to take the project, there may be a surprise: “Wow! And I thought that this guy would fill up the project! ”
Smiley Keep you informed, listen to your requests in the process, always pleasant. True, they have a lot of work, and they always do not have time, although they sit until night. As a result, you do not understand what exactly was done in the project, what is not, where your requests were taken into account, where they were not taken into account, where they seemed to be taken into account, but again it turned out wrong.
Sending out. Hard guys, send to hell at once. Require you to make decisions quickly and efficiently. They will take you to the livers and not bend one iota. It is not always clear with them who works for whom. But their project will work. And even ahead of time. Let not always the way you would like it, but it will work. And you will work.
The site has been written, the main functionality has been set, the remaining cognac will be finished in honor of the successful presentation to the authorities. And you start to launch your new creation into the network. Most likely, you do it smoothly, transferring key customers to the site gradually. Here is the time to tell more about the content.
Almost every studio on the site has a teardrop text about how they made a fucking resource, and the customer was a moron and fucked up with ugly banners and stupid text. In order not to say anything about you, try to build a process within your department. An excellent example for you can serve as advertising agencies. Even if you are not a department head, you can win the favor of leadership, showing that your path is more efficient, and, accordingly, brings money.
PS There are no links that would not be perceived for PR.
PS Frankly, many good thoughts come after you have already made a mistake. Read, memorize and do not do the same.
I want to share with you how I did my first, really big project; to talk about rakes, difficulties and some hacks that I managed to realize. Today I will not talk about technology as such - more and more I will talk about processes.
I apologize to the community for errors in the text. As I did not try to raise my literacy level, I didn’t succeed. I corrected most of the mistakes thanks to the Word. If you intelligently tell me about the rest - I will be very grateful to you.
And, actually, to hell?
I have been in the industry for more than a year, in different positions, in different companies. And how many times people could not answer the question - and why the hell they, in fact, the site - not count.
')
Mistress note! If the bosses tell you to make a site, but they don’t know why, discourage them until the last, call the maximum estimates of terms and budgets, ask how the resource will be profitable. The fact is that in the absence of profit from the resource may ask you!
In our case, everything is simple: the old site was on Parcer. And because of the attempts to save hours at a not very cheap contractor (after all, everyone understands that you will find a person with Parser knowledge of FIG) the project gradually turned into a zombie. Well, or so it seemed to us. And we needed a sea of fresh functionality, a change in the design and programming language on which the site was written.
We decided that it would definitely be easier to write a new site.
Search for a contractor.
All our previous sites were made by large companies with well-known names. Therefore, I decided that we would be looking for a contractor in the first half of the runet rating. But not in Moscow. So most often it is cheaper.
It is on this occasion that I met with considerable administrative resistance. Despite the fact that we are a wholesale company working with all of Russia and some CIS countries, no one wants to have a contractor several thousand kilometers out of some subjective considerations.
The question resolved the following remark: “Why do you need a contractor in Moscow? Will you break his knees in case of a delay? ”
Mistress note! In fact, there is a sense in close proximity to the studio: all those in charge can come to your office, look at the goods, talk with all your managers, understand more deeply the requirements of your business. In principle, your business trip to the developer's habitat can improve the situation of immersing a studio in your business. But I did not manage to verify this.
The next important place for me was the flexibility of the company. Due to the nature of the market, we needed instant responses to our wishes, not answers in a month. And then I remembered the magic word Agile, intriguing and mysterious.
Mistress note! In fact, flexible methodologies only lead to the fact that you invest money in a project more efficiently, no less (an ejayl studio is much harder to push into redoing what you didn’t like, for free), but more effectively.
Studio we chose. Some keyword searches will allow you to easily understand what kind of studio it is.
Pre-project work.
A project is like a child: first you dream about it, make plans about how cute it will be, how all your friends will praise him and set an example to their projects; then you find the studio with which you are going to create this project. And here begins one of the most enjoyable processes - conception.
You, together with your colleagues and the studio's project manager, generate ideas, estimate budgets, make absolutely crazy plans.
Mistress note! Tell the project to the studio, what kind of company you have, what kind of products you sell, give him (or better everyone involved in the project) something cool from his assortment. Make the studio love you and your company!
Here I can not give any special advice on design methods. Mindmaps are great at work. Whiteboard is a great helper.
What about the characters. I can not say that we used this method deeply (there’s probably no studio habit, or they didn’t see the need), but just for myself, I highly recommend you to create 2-3 characters. This will help prioritize your delightful ideas.
Mistress note! Approve ideas from all interested parties. First of all, those who are engaged in real sales. As a result, they bring the company money and have the greatest weight. If you explain how this or that thought is useful for them, no matter how things are, they will let you realize it.
Prototyping
The wholesale fashion for interactive prototypes appeared not so long ago - a couple of years ago. The prototype is a good thing. He solves two problems at once: designing the interaction and visual aids. In principle, the prototype can in some way replace the technical task. And most importantly, there is every chance that your superiors will get acquainted with it (even if just looking at you from the back), unlike the technical task. At this point, you can resolve all major "alternative" questions about the site.
Mistress note! If you were given a project without a prototype with a 120 page specification, and the page thumbnails are made by tables in Word, do not be lazy, draw it all on a piece of paper. On a big piece of paper. That way A2. Straight pages in miniature, from buttons / links arrows to other pages. The pictures may look like a daub of a preschooler child. This is not the main thing, but the main thing is that you will understand the logic of the work of the resource. And you will probably find a mistake. Write TK more than 20 pages and at the same time keep it logical and unmistakable - a titanic work that not everyone can do.
At the prototype stage, it is extremely important not to forget anything and torment the studio to the last. If you don’t do this, it will be bad for everyone: you, the manager on the studio side, and the developers. Each in its own way, but each of your sclerosis, the lazy thought "A, and dick with him" will result in hemorrhoids for all involved in the process. And above all for you!
Pre-project work, part 2
I’m all decaying about how to work with studios, draw diagrams, talk the teeth to the manager. But the most important thing you have to do is prepare all the materials for your part. And then the thicker the guerrillas, the thicker the forest. The main problems are content, of course. In our case, more than 2,000 product items: a bunch of brands, collections, photos.
This is a huge layer of information, a bunch of photos, links, materials, and for all this someone must be responsible.
Worst of all, when you change the areas of responsibility within the company.
Here we have for the availability of goods on the site answered your humble servant. I wrote letters that you need to add the product to the site. Unloading from 1s was done, photos were molded in three formats and clung to the site with a special script. Problems appeared even at the stage of setting the task for me. Further, in general, it was a complete horror.
Everybody got hung up when, in the absence of goods, everyone and no one are to blame ... Then we decided: let everything be taken from 1s! The party said - cool, Komsomol answered - yes! The men, as usual, thought - we need such an honor on the dick ?!
The fact is that the peasants (mostly in the appearance of lovely ladies) did not smile at all at bringing in the database of information. This is TIME! And they come to the warehouse one by one!
And the person following 1c did not believe at all that lovely ladies would manage to maintain order in such a wild variety of fields.
But in the end everything was agreed.
Another hitch is connected with the very curious integration of the site with 1c through an intermediate MS SQL database.
Mistress note! As soon as you do something nonstandard, and technical specialists from different sides of the agreement are linked in this - wait for problems.
In fact, you can't really send either your techies or studio techies. Because on the one hand it threatens you with an increase in future estimates at the expense of unpredictable risks, and on the other hand simply spoiled relations with the technical director. After all, it is up to him to evaluate all your ideas from the technical side and tell the authorities about their viability.
Be dodgy, be soft, be hard, sing, drink, press, swear, ask. Your task is to launch a working project. If your decisions hurt someone's ChSV, then buy him a bottle of brandy. And buy a bottle for yourself (better than three), because your ChSV will be touched more than once or twice.
Mistress note! BECOME A RELIABLE TIME TO PERFORM THE WORK REQUIRED! If necessary, put in a copy of all those interested.
Design
Well, then how? If you have been in the industry for more than three years and regularly read the right resources, you generally know what it is all about.
Mistress note! The designer must love your project. This is noticeable in detail: how detailed and unusually the icons are, how the small elements are selected. I believe that it is quite acceptable to reject the layout due to the lack of designer love for it. From the second or third attempt love will appear;)
Production
So we got to the fun. That is what we were preparing for six months. The stage of programming has begun. Childbirth is close. Now everyone is torturing you, from the studio to HR, who wants to post vacancies to a new site. And you pass on the top of the studio manager. And so it will be a month and a half.
Exactly now all the holes in the TZ will be flown out, the budget deficit, deadlines due to the fact that they have forgotten sensibly to evaluate some function. Some sort of facs will happen.
The guys started to set up integration with our server, almost the first day there was no light in the office ... not at all. Then there was a move - two days the server did not work at all. Another week they worked through one place. At that moment, I urgently needed to go to another city for a few days.
Mistress note! From the phone it is quite possible to steer the process even from another city: connect to MS SQL, the remote terminal, call via Skype. Sucks only design accept. Better do it on a normal monitor. Well, if you are not in your hometown, take care of roaming packages. MegaFon, for example, has the package “Everywhere Moscow”.
During the production phase, managers are divided into three types - tihuny, smileys and senders. Now I am talking about three types of managers with whom you can work, and eventually get a working draft. Assholes in the subspecies, I will not allocate.
Tikhuna They go deep underground, call every couple of weeks (always at the wrong time) to ask some question on the functionality (some trifle you hardly remember), with some deadlines come and pass the project. Ready to do some things. Generally, when they come to take the project, there may be a surprise: “Wow! And I thought that this guy would fill up the project! ”
Smiley Keep you informed, listen to your requests in the process, always pleasant. True, they have a lot of work, and they always do not have time, although they sit until night. As a result, you do not understand what exactly was done in the project, what is not, where your requests were taken into account, where they were not taken into account, where they seemed to be taken into account, but again it turned out wrong.
Sending out. Hard guys, send to hell at once. Require you to make decisions quickly and efficiently. They will take you to the livers and not bend one iota. It is not always clear with them who works for whom. But their project will work. And even ahead of time. Let not always the way you would like it, but it will work. And you will work.
Postproduction
The site has been written, the main functionality has been set, the remaining cognac will be finished in honor of the successful presentation to the authorities. And you start to launch your new creation into the network. Most likely, you do it smoothly, transferring key customers to the site gradually. Here is the time to tell more about the content.
Almost every studio on the site has a teardrop text about how they made a fucking resource, and the customer was a moron and fucked up with ugly banners and stupid text. In order not to say anything about you, try to build a process within your department. An excellent example for you can serve as advertising agencies. Even if you are not a department head, you can win the favor of leadership, showing that your path is more efficient, and, accordingly, brings money.
PS There are no links that would not be perceived for PR.
PS Frankly, many good thoughts come after you have already made a mistake. Read, memorize and do not do the same.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/152473/
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