Building Partnerships, not Projects

Talk at Dublin WordCamp 2017

WordPress TV Link: https://wordpress.tv/2017/11/11/beatrice-whelan-and-sean-blakeley-building-partnerships-not-projects-with-wordpress/

Building a partnership takes an investment of time and energy for both the client & delivery agency. Earlier this year, Sage embarked on an ambitious programme to rebuild its entire online presence. Part of the plan was for a global WordPress multi-site.

This will be a discussion, co-presented by Sage (the client) and Pragmatic (the agency), which will provide a 360 view of a large WordPress project, covering both the technical and non-technical aspects. We’ll talk about the steps you can take when facing a hugely challenging project – facing up to tight timelines and translating multiple desires into a deliverable programme of work. We’ll look at how you can maximise your efficiency during production, leveraging the core functionality that WordPress provides and building on top of it, and how planning the architecture with an eye on the future can be the key to building partnerships. We’ll hear about the project from the client’s perspective as Sage will talk about their experiences – and from an agency perspective, delivering the work.

There were plenty of challenges along the journey on both sites – creating a custom WP API in a matter of days, training internal staff on new tools and migrating thousands of posts. But most of all, we’ll look at how we focused on building a partnership – creating trust and efficiency which benefited both sides.

Transcript

1. Dublin WordCamp - October 2017 BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS NOT PROJECTS with WordPress
2. Sean Blakeley Producer & Product Owner @Pragmatic s@pragmatic.agency pragmatic.agency Beatrice Whelan Global Content Manager, Social Media, Events & Blog @Sage beatrice.whelan@sage.com sage.com
3. WHO? Clients & Agencies
4. WHAT? Principles of Partnership
5. HOW? Applying the Principles of Partnership
6. WHY? The Benefits of Building Partnerships
7. Building a Successful Partnership requires...
8. Trust
9. Multiple Project Touchpoints Each decision point, presentation, deadline or review introduces risk
10. Initial Estimate Too High Reduce by 15% Near Impossible Deadlines Agree Multiple Feature Requests Agree X X X Client Statement Response Build Trust? Building Trust Honesty & not over-promising builds trust over time
11. Building Trust 2. Transparency 3. Approach 4. Improving 5. Shared Vision {1. Understanding Needs
12. sage.com/blog Introducing the Sage Advice Project Using WordPress as the main CMS: sage.com/blog
13. sage.com/blog Sage Advice The site includes personalisation features
14. sage.com/blog Innovation A trending engine has been created for Sage Advice
15. How Did We Get Here? Full Design, Multiple Site, Migrations & Move Intensive period of discovery before a full digital transformation
16. Understanding Needs Building Trust 1. Define the Problem - Define Success The challenge of different definitions of success from different stakeholders
17. Transparency Building Trust 2. Honest Communications Openly discuss problems, issues & setbacks
18. Approach Building Trust 3. Zoom In & Out An agile approach enables the team to zoom into ticket and out to epics
19. Communication Trust ? Waterfall Threatens Trust Trust declines over time with scattered communications during waterfall
20. Trust Communication Trust Agile Builds Trust Agile increases trust with multiple touchpoints across the project
21. Commitment to Constant Improving Building Trust 4.
22. Shared Vision Building Trust 5. Understand the Client Vision Taking the time to understand the bigger picture
23. MVP Feature Rich Industry Leader Innovator Establishing the Narrative Define the journey & objectives together
24. Working Together True partnership is achieved as the trust and togetherness grows
25. Zoomed Out Project Overview An example of our scrum board
26. Integrating With an Existing CMS Achieve deep integration with existing .net CMS
27. https://sage-example.com/api/v1/related?tags=wordcamp&category =conference&max_results=16&word_count=12&secret_key=hello Define Success We defined success together - then created an API which achieved success
28. Opt In API The requester is able to add as much (or as little) information as required
29. Frictionless UX Numerous touchpoints enables frictionless movement between systems
30. Migration From Existing Blogs We needed to define what a blog post meant to Sage
31. Dedicated Migration Tool The definition of a post enabled us to create a scraper tool for migrations
32. Dark Social Sharing We wanted to enable users to share on Slack
33. Giving Back to the Community We created a dedicated plugin & plan, with Sage to release to the community
34. WHY? Building Partnerships Takes Effort Why invest the additional energy?
35. Because Partnership + Trust = Pleasure The working relationship becomes fun, engaging & productive
36. Dublin WordCamp - October 2017