15 Sep Recalculating Route
Part 3 of 6
Project management is a bit like using GPS on a long trip. You load the car, punch in the address and follow the route. The radio is playing your favorite tunes, and the kids aren’t bickering. You stop for snacks and bathroom breaks, making sure all the same kids get back in the car and none try to sneak any local wildlife aboard that might escape and hide somewhere in the car. And you continue on your merry way.
And then it happens.
A big part of your route is closed for construction. The road you expected to be available is unusable so you make a detour. Turning the car around to head back home is frankly just not an option. You are working hard to make sure this trip happens.
Since our first client meetings, we hoped to receive actual customer feedback on trouble tickets to help us determine where the bottlenecks on their website occur and how we can help solve the problem. Up until yesterday, we received none, causing us to push forward with our examination of other issues to log for our final report. That is our alternate route, and I believe we have plenty of material to cover even without this new customer information.
This week we are defining the gap in our client’s content. While I wait for the rest of my team to post their audit findings to our shared spreadsheet, I’ve been pondering all the items I’ve been logging. I plan to pore over competitor websites and compare features, even though the website we are working on is for customer’s eyes only and not available to the general public, so I will obviously not have access to similar competitor databases.
Now I am thinking of a strategy to convey our results to the client diplomatically without overwhelming them with our feedback.
I tend to focus on metadata, taxonomy, site architecture, and content relationships. I am relying on my team to help with the other areas I may not focus as heavily on. This coordination is what will get our team to the finish line successfully and ultimately benefit the client.