A great agency provides innovation, market intelligence, benchmarking and strategy over and above the contracted digital marketing campaign or ecommerce, app or web build. A great agency moves from a short term focus on the transaction to a trusted advisor, contributing advice and lateral learnings gained from other industry sectors on improving workflows, fine-tuning processes and breaking down silos within an organisation.

Setting up for success is key to getting the best out of the relationship. The first step is to ensure that procurement and contracting are focused on outcomes rather than the pure cost.  The next step then is a well thought out on-boarding and workflow processes to enable the new service provider deliver the cream.

Practical tips on building a great relationship with your digital vendor

While there’s a push towards a formalised and technical approach to Vendor Management, on a basic level, I’ve found a practical approach to be helpful in developing quality supplier relationships over and above tactical reviews:

Monthly meetings. These meetings are limited to one hour to discuss high level performance, i.e. what’s working and what’s not. Included in the meeting is the business/product owner along with senior agency representatives with the project manager as optional. This time gives both agency and client the chance to address and fix any risks before they blow up, and encourages clear communication by

• Setting the agenda well before hand
• Discussing expectations from both agency and client side
• Uncovering any assumptions and/or dependencies impacting on services
• Reviewing invoicing or operational concerns such as resourcing and skill sets required to meet future demand
• Setting recurring meetings

6 monthly review. This meeting runs for at least 2 hours for a more formal performance and documentation review. It’s important to have the data ready to review against agreed goals. Questions to ask include:

• Have all the deliverables agreed to in the contract been received?
• Are variations in the contract required to take into account change requests?
• Do workflow processes need to change to cater for a different environment or new requirements.

Annual roadmap. This gives the vendor the platform to discuss trends, new developments, assess other successful case studies, and a wish list. It’s also a good time to bring in other senior stakeholders, and introduce the vendor to other areas of the company.

Ad-hoc open and honest conversations about your expectations. I had a frank discussion with one of our suppliers last year, which re-energised the relationship, established open channels of communication, and now they consistently over-perform and delight with their service.

It’s critical that the business owner is directly involved in these conversations, otherwise those strategic insights will be lost in translation from contracts manager to procurement to IT.

Claudia Sagripanti

Churning and burning suppliers is not only costly; there is a significant loss of strategic intelligence, which directly impacts business outcomes. Spend the time getting the right agency on board with the right processes to secure great results.

The post Getting the best performance from your digital services supplier appeared first on Digital Nation.

Particularly with agile where cost overruns and timetable slippage due to constant change are a real risk, it’s critical to have proper processes in place. Most agencies and clients new to agile haven’t yet developed the cost controls and workflows required.

This one-day intensive covers how to make agency processes more efficient, what tools are needed to deliver profitable projects, and how to make the agile relationship work well between client and agency.

Commenting on the launch, Digital Nation’s Director, Claudia Sagripanti says, “The project manager has a key role in managing expectations between agency and client on agile projects. They need to ensure that there’s no ambiguity on project requirements. The project manager is the key to ensuring that the team is working as agreed.

The course rates highly, with feedback confirming that the training is vital to help the project manager spot and manage problems, and communicate effectively with internal and external stakeholders.”

Key topics covered:

1. How to match expectations and systems between agency and client on agile projects
2. Ways to minimise risk
3. Identify red flags, deliver bad news and recover from problems
4. Implement essential tools, templates and documentation for project control
5. Stakeholder management techniques

Since launching the first digital project management series in 2008, Digital Nation has trained over 1000 companies to deliver profitable quality projects.

Book NOW for 24 November in Sydney. Special discounts available for AIMIA members. More information at www.aimia.com.au/training.

About the workshop leader: Vishy Narayanan

Vishy is a powerful and highly engaging speaker combining deep practical experience in project management with extensive theoretical knowledge.

He is a leading online strategist with global experience spanning over 16 years, and his unique strength lies in his ability to combine strong commercial business acumen with proven ability in the architecture, delivery and management of innovative online programs for leading global organisations.

-ENDS-

About Digital Nation www.digital-nation.com.au

Digital Nation is for people who want to lead digital businesses, and not sit on the sidelines. Through masterclasses, in-house training, seminars and invitation-only roundtables we provide intelligence and the vital professional and commercial skills needed to run a successful digital business. We support chief digital officers, project managers, account managers and operations/delivery managers to deliver on commercial and operational goals.

Contact:

Claudia Sagripanti, Director, Digital Nation

Claudia@digital-nation.com.au

Mob: 0414 520 836

The post Managing risk in agile projects – new workshop for digital project managers appeared first on Digital Nation.

This one-day seminar on 31 March investigates how to take the best from both worlds, manage agile in a waterfall environment and still deliver ROI. It also brings together the C-suite of product, business, program, finance and legal managers.

The highly regarded speaker panel will help you deliver business by

1. Understanding what elements of agile to use – and what to leave out
2. Managing agile in highly regulated environments
3. Reviewing the need for the business case
4. Minimising legal & commercial risk of agile projects client and agency side
5. Setting up a pilot and  transition action plan

with case studies and contributions from                

Join the conversation on agile business + product with:

• Chief Digital Officers, Heads of Online/Digital
• Chief Marketing Officers, Digital Marketers
• PMO
• Heads of Digital Services
• Product Owners/Managers
• Capability Managers
• Program/Project Managers

Bookings now open for the seminar on March 31 in Sydney. For further detail contact claudia(at)digital-nation.com.au or visit the Managing Agile in a Waterfall program page.

The post Managing Agile Waterfall Business for ROI appeared first on Digital Nation.

So is there one tool out there that does the job for digital agencies?

The answer is…it depends on the task. Do you need to create a project plan or track or as a collaboration/communications tool? What’s the size of your agency and how many people will use it?

While you can’t beat trust old Excel for simplicity, here are some common tools rated highly by local agencies (note that license and set up costs vary). For client side the answer will be different, although I’m using MS Project at the moment and what ever tools the developer may require for collaboration and logging bugs and issues. I recently used Podio as a collaboration and issue tracking tool but found it difficult. That may have been due to the antiquated versions of IE and Firefox we were tied to at the time. If you as the agency are looking to use tools that include clients, then ensure they suit the lowest common denominator.

Here are some PM tools which are being successfully used by local digital agencies:

Jira for issue tracking

Used by both agencies and clients alike for issue and bug reporting this is a popular tool.  It is easily customisable for the particular needs of your company department, but there is bit of a learning curve. It can also do project tracking, and has a number of other add-ons including a code management function (for a fee). It is quickly becoming the de-facto tool for issue tracking.

Basecamp for communications

Basecamp is a great tool to enable communication across departments, clients and agencies. Because it was one of the early project management tools it has gone through a big evolution and is therefore easy to use. The strength of Basecamp is in the ability to assign and track tasks, share files and calendars and send messages across agency and client. It has extended into other areas such as issues tracking, authorisation and workflow as well as invoicing etc.

My only reservation is that it relies on the client to be relatively sophisticated -  it relies on IE 9+ which is not fully installed at my current place of work so the business side people can’t access it.

Projector for time and cost tracking and invoicing

Projector started out as a tool for professional services, and has been successfully implemented by several agencies I spoke to. They like the ability to time and expenses, invoicing, scheduling, and managing projects. It gives both a high level executive view of a project and can also manage the detail.  It also has easy Dropbox and Basecamp integration.

Assembla for job tracking

Timesheeting and job tracking is a continual challenge. Assembla does the job in job tracking and ticketing system. Its speciality is in combining code and task management so it’s really useful for commercial software development.

Traffic LIVE for scheduling, resourcing and reporting

Traffic LIVE is a studio management system that offers scheduling, invoicing and task management. While it’s primarily a creative support tool it’s also well used in the digital world to help manage tasks, project management, scheduling/resourcing and timesheeting. The system gives a helicopter view and can handle quoting, billing and reporting.

Liquid Planner for managing multiple projects

Liquid Planner gives a very useful resourcing view of projects across the agency or division by assessing the impact of a range of estimations and expected delivery dates. From a financial management perspective the tool can be used to assess the impact of discounts and to reflect risk, and to give financial reports. Liquid Planner is particularly effective at planning, resourcing and managing tasks across multiple projects.

Other tools which have been mentioned:

• Proworkflow
• Briefcase
• Streamtime
• Agile Zen which supports agile methodology

Or go your own way – building your own PM tool

Some of the agencies I’ve spoken to recently have created a bespoke tool that covers everything from high level projects performance, resourcing, tracking time, logging and tracking issues. Or one agency built a system that integrates with financial reporting, and Jira for issue tracking. For example they are able to report on project efficiency, chargeable time, utilisation etc. Forecasting is always tricky, as projects sometimes change in scope midway. Depending on the complexity of the system it can take up to a year to implement.

There’s a fine line to tread – between capturing sufficient information for reporting and decision making, or asking for too much information and tying up people in filling reports and time sheets at the expense of actually doing work which is very unproductive. Ultimately the PM tool has to suit your specific circumstances.

For more on timesheeting and ways to encourage staff to do it – read my previous post here or for  other reviews of PM tools.

If you have any other tools that you’d rate, please comment here:

The post Project Management Tools for Digital Agencies appeared first on Digital Nation.

I’m a senior project manager based within the IT division of the University of Technology, Sydney. I work on projects in the university’s IT capital management portfolio.

How did you get started in digital?

My start was in information science. My first job was as a research assistant on a project mapping the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. We were using GPS technology to map sites and generate interactive maps.

What’s your current favourite book, website, blog or source of inspiration on project management?

Don’t really have one. I often refer to PM standard manuals at the university.

What type of projects do you/your team work on – how long do they run? 

The  projects run across the whole university and cover a huge range of business processes. A project could last three months or three years. I’m working on a portal project that’s in its early stages really and will continue for quite some time. Right now we’re working on a content migration project, with 35 websites being migrated to the new CMS. The next stage will be a discovery project looking at the technological underpinnings of the portal.

Recent projects include: developing an API to pull data from a hosted event management database into the university’s public events portal and an analysis project reviewing UTS’s educational technologies.

What are the particular challenges you face in managing digital services projects internally? How do you ensure that they integrate with other projects/departments. How do you get visibility at CEO level?

The university’s web environment has a large and diverse stakeholder community. So it’s important to develop a good knowledge of the people, and the many systems and web interfaces in place by engaging with this community. What can be particularly challenging is running a project that may run counter to one group’s business priorities.

Getting visibility is a combination of effective communications and project methodology, which includes board formation through to the project team and maybe even reference groups. In order to get to the right people and groups, you often have to use the existing hierarchies and reporting lines to ensure buy-in.

Do you outsource or use contractors? 

Yes, to get things done you need to bring in external expertise quite often. Usually there’s an incumbent or a preferred vendor or for  a new project you may need an exemption to negotiate directly or go to tender. At the moment, the university doesn’t have a preferred vendor list, but it’s aware of the need.

What particular skills set, process or type of person do you look for in a digital services provider?

It really depends on the project. For the public events portal, we used an agency expert in such things. For anything you start with a clear definition of what you need and when, and then go out and procure the expertise to do that. Digital services is only part of the big picture.

I look for clear benefits as I develop the business cases. Benefits are expected to to be tracked, so the measures have to be identified early.

What’s your biggest bugbear in dealing with a digital agency?

Digital agencies tend to be “whole service” groups who tend to want to control how requirements are put together. They sometimes don’t like to be given something that’s already specified, which can often happen as we are ourselves an IT group.

Time and materials, fixed cost, or performance bonuses. How do you structure a relationship with a digital agency?

Tend to go fixed cost as it works better for projects with finite budgets. With large projects, it tends to be the same because we’re a public organisation whose spending needs to stand up to public scrutiny.

Agile or waterfall?

Agile for development. Having said that the IT group is pretty much a PRINCE2 shop from a project management point of view.

How do you keep hours and costs on or under budget? How do you maintain profitability on each and every project? Is it a result of project management processes, good budgeting, or initial scoping?

Because we use PRINCE2 there are a range of forms and processes for ensuring a project remains on track and under budget. We are expected to formally report on progress. Profitability is not usually a factor in my environment.

What tools do you use internally to manage time and job tasks?

I use a range of tools which can change depending on the group – atlassian/jira, basecamp, redmine, assembla. I use project, visio, Sharepoint for teams and networked drives. In addition I use a variety of schedules, logs and reports.

What tools do you use to manage external providers? 

So long as we follow procurement policy, we can manage external providers by agreement. It often involves using their ticketing system and escalation protocols.

Is the focus of your activities changing? What do you see coming up in digital?

Part of my work regularly requires an element of “discovery” in terms of emerging technologies and business requirements. That aspect is constant.

Like technology in general, digital is always changing. Socialisation and personalisation of content along with multi-platform accessibility is still playing out and likely has a long way to go. Large organisations like mine continue to want to keep up with these trends and, in the case of learning technologies, lead them. There is a strong desire to use digital to harness social capital for greater productivity and to free up work practices with policies like BYOD.

The post Client perspective: Interview with UTS’s Peter Moloney appeared first on Digital Nation.

Senior Project Manager at CPA Australia.

How did you get started in digital?

As a student studying at Adelaide University, I developed and managed an online apparel retail business in the late 1990s into the early 2000s – The Sureshot Apparel. The business concept was unique for its time. I worked together with traditional retailers to merchandise and retail their surplus stock online and distribute to an international customer base.  The concept won the Premier’s Enterprise Scholarship and a place in Adelaide University’s business incubator program. I am highly appreciative of the opportunity and support I received from this program; without it I never would have got started in Digital.

What’s your current favourite book, website, blog or source of inspiration

Mashable is definitely on the list and also TED. I was inspired by Malcolm Gladwell’s first book, The Tipping Point in the early part of my career. And ‘Hollywood Secrets of Project Management Success’ by James Persee, which compares IT project management with the film industry, is a very interesting read.

What type of projects do you work on – how long do they run? 

Since 2005 I have been involved various enterprise digital projects, covering areas such as eCommerce, web, mobile, email marketing, and CMS. More recent projects have focused on eCommerce and enterprise content management system implementations. Larger digital programs of work can span over 12 months in duration, but on the whole most of the projects I’ve managed run from between 6 and 12 months.

What are the particular challenges you face in managing digital services projects internally? Is there are broader requirement to integrate your projects with the broader marketing activities?

There is always a tension between BAU priorities and project work. This is something which needs to be managed closely, but is typical of all projects, not just digital projects. I think some of the main challenges project managers face is in articulating the ROI on a digital project. Often digital projects don’t fit the traditional model and many of the delivered benefits are not always financial.

Do you outsource or use contractors? 

Yes, both. As a project manager you are reliant on your resources and bringing them together to work as a single project team. Depending on circumstances, whether they be technical challenges, environmental or budgetary, you need to engage suitable resources and often these resources cannot be found internally, which means going to market for either contractors or outsourcing significant delivery components to vendors.

What particular skills set, process or type of person do you look for in a digital services provider?

When engaging an external service provider I am looking for them to be able to deliver additional skills and capabilities into the client organisation. On the whole I look for the technical skills and capability, real world examples of similar project implementations, organisational reach back, enterprise certifications, client references and my experience working with the supplier in the past. But overwhelmingly I’m looking for someone who can work collaboratively as part of a hybrid team.

What’s your biggest bugbear in dealing with a digital agency?

My biggest irritation at the moment, and this isn’t just with agencies, is the belief that the Agile methodology is a silver bullet for all business and organisation problems. I’m not criticising Agile as a methodology, but I am saying it is not suitable for every single project. Agile needs to be embraced by the organisation as well as the project team. Most importantly, it should be implemented correctly according to the framework. Agile definitely does not mean no documentation.

Agile or waterfall?

Both. All depends on the context, environment and project goals. I find the Waterfall works better for large scale enterprise system implementations, and then an Agile approach for optimisation, enhancements and break fix once the new site or system is implemented.

What tools do you use internally to manage time and job tasks?

Various tools for different tasks, Microsoft Project and Project Server for project planning and tracking tasks and schedule, JIRA for Agile sprint management, enhancements and bug tracking, MTM for test case management and execution.

How do you keep hours and costs on or under budget? How do you maintain profitability on each and every project? Is it a result of project management processes, good budgeting, or initial scoping? 

I think all three of those elements come into play. On-going diligence and management is necessary, and it is definitively important to develop robust initial estimates and refine these estimations using a combination of work break down structure, expert and SME input, and where ever possible formal estimation driven by historical data from similar projects.

The post Client-side Point of View – Interview with Luke Revill, CPA Australia appeared first on Digital Nation.

Tim Parsons, Mi9

In the Academy Award-winning 2010 caper Inception, a crew of technicians enter each other’s dreams in a dramatic quest to plant an entirely original idea in the mind of an industry scion, that they hope will change the world.

Inception is an example of a group of people adapting in real-time to circumstances, each person bringing all their abilities, imagination and drive to the problem: no passengers. Inspiring, thrilling stuff.

Now think of your development team: developers, data folks and designers. Do you see them operating like the crew in inception ? Or more like their polar opposite: passive drones who look + feel like they’re lost within a huge corporate structure, projects grinding on through massive requirements documents towards unsatisfactory and under-performing end-products. If your answer is, truthfully, yes, then you need to take a long hard look at yourself, how your org is doing things – and consider the Agile development approach.

Agile Development – plus its parent Lean, and flavours Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP) – are methods to make it easier for a group of people working together to collaborate and make decisions, and deliver working products. Sounds pretty good right ?

Crib notes: the ‘agility’ part comes because the Agile process is based on short-cycle ‘time-boxed’ iterations which incrementally lead up to product releases. The approach values people interactions over documentation, process adaptability over fixed requirements: being iterative means it can adapt to changing requirements. (Yep, in the real world, business requirements are constantly changing!) Lean Development – originally a ‘just-in-time’, order only-what-you-need philosophy pioneered by Toyota – has evolved to become “build minimum viable product (MVP) -> test on audience -> adjust and extend MVP -> repeat test-cycle” – discipline to capture changing audience requirements via open prototyping. XP is a software-specific version of Agile which adds in transparent collaboration, keyboard-sharing co-work, unit-testing and planning . Scrum is a more general form of Agile which can be used for any kind of project.

Agile Dev is not easy

You need to have solid, respectful, supporting relationships between stakeholders and teams, and lots of new ways of working together to make it deliver. Unlearning old habits is very hard, especially if you’ve been used to working alone, or in a more waterfall manner. Also, if your office environment is already toxic, then you’ve got lots of culture work to do: a key principle in Agile is visibility/transparency, which is hard to achieve if there’s a culture of blame. Finally, Agile is also not complete – you need to adapt it and add in doses of Lean, XP and Scrum to make it work.

Agile improves project success rate

But it’s worth it. According to respected US software performance think-tank The Standish Group , over 29% of projects run using ‘traditional’ waterfall methods are a failure, and only 14% truly succeed. In contrast, for Agile, only 9% are failing and more like 42% are unequivocal successes. Makes you think.

Agile Business Forum in August…book now

For a more in-depth consideration of how agile is impacting on business models, please email claudia (at) digital-nation.com.au for the full length article. This topic will also be discussed in a half day forum with Tim, and other agency/client practitioners – Sydney on 13th August and Melbourne on 16th August.

Saito: You remind me of someone… a man I met in a half-remembered dream. He was possessed of some radical notions. (Inception, 2010)

Saito from the movie Inception

The post Agile Software Development for Managers – Point of View appeared first on Digital Nation.

The post Digital Project Managers unite! Meet-ups booked for Sydney & Melbourne appeared first on Digital Nation.

There are many forms like the statement of work and contract where you’re chasing the client for sign-off, and it’s daunting to think you need to chase them again for the acceptance certificates. However, acceptance certificates are just as important for your commercial success says Julie. The concept is borrowed from the building world where completion or occupancy certificates are mandated for safety, and as a payment milestone.

As the agency, you issue an acceptance certificates when your project/campaign/site is about to go live, or is compete. “Acceptance Certificates provide a very concrete signpost to acknowledge completion of a piece of work and that the client now accepts responsibility for it.  It signifies the end of the Development Phase and is a key entry criteria to going live”, says Julie.

The certificate needs to include

• A clear statement as to what is being signed off (with references to the appropriate supporting deliverables) as per the original statement of work
• An area to allow any outstanding or known defects to be included.  It’s very unusual not to have a few low priority issues that still need to be resolved so this then provides a finite list of any remaining issues that will be solved post-acceptance
• A plan to fix  those issues in a specific time frame
• Allow 5 days for the client to accept and sign off, or deemed acceptance. This avoids delay in payment and and allows you to move to the next stage.

The 6 benefits of an acceptance certificate:

1. It triggers payment. That has to be a strong motivator!
2. You can then move to a different phase of the contract such as warranty, or support and maintenance. The support phase also gives you the opportunity to involve less experienced staff
3. It facilitates discussions with the client to ensure that all deliverables have been completed as expected and all outstanding issues are identified.
4. It is very helpful in preventing the ‘long tail’ that is associated with many projects as it forces all parties to agree on the status of the project at a point in time.
5. And you have agreement with  your client to fix known problems in a specific time frame.
6. The project team gets to feel a sense of completion and it’s the perfect time to celebrate!

Follow Julie on twitter @Jules_000

The post Why acceptance certificates should be a crucial part of your agency’s processes appeared first on Digital Nation.

I’m Joint Managing Director at Reactive. We’re a digital agency and have been running for 15 years. My main focus is working with our major clients, and helping to welcome new ones (you could call it sales & marketing).

What type of projects does your company work on – how long do they run?

A typical project is a large Web site that requires some sound thinking up front, a well-considered (and validated) user experience, some complex technical stuff and flawless delivery. We also help to build awareness through online campaigns, search marketing and the like.

How did you get started in digital?

My business partner (Tim Fouhy) and I both studied Computer Graphic Design in NZ, which had a large focus on traditional graphic design skills plus CD-Rom development. In our last year of study someone invented the Internet (or maybe it was Netscape 2), and we jumped at the chance to combine our design skills with the WWW.

Our first job in Australia was at Sausage Software, back in 1996 when they were flying high as one of Australia’s first true Internet and eCommerce businesses. We were thrown in the deep end, and loved it.

What’s your current favourite book, website, blog or source of inspiration for your business?

On the iPad I flit between design, digital and advertising blogs (such as Adverblog, Digital Buzz Blog); with ‘real’ books (or my Kindle) it’s normally business books. The last book I finished was The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, highly recommended.

What’s the ratio of project managers to developers/producers?

 About 1:5 or 1:6

 How many staff do you have in total

We have 110 full-time staff between our five offices; Melbourne (our Head Office), Sydney, Auckland, London and New York. We opened in NYC last October, and it’s been a smash hit.

I expect this will grow to 130 this year, we’re recruiting for a range of roles in every office (get in touch!)

Have you introduced in new roles/jobs title in your business – is the nature of your business changing?

Copywriting is a reasonably new full-time role for us, and an area of our business that is growing fast. This reflects a change in our business from being known as a great user-experience and Web development agency to a ‘full-service’ digital agency over the past two years, i.e. producing a lot more campaign work for our clients.

How do you keep hours and costs on or under budget? How do you maintain profitability on each and every project? Is it a result of project management processes, good budgeting, or initial scoping? 

 I think good budgeting and initial scoping are all part of a solid project management process – the project has started before it hits the studio! We’re pretty good in this area, project management and discipline is something we’ve continuously improved on in the past 15 years (or else we wouldn’t have lasted this long!).

We give our project teams a lot of ownership over the project budget and schedule, and try to involve them as early as possible. By having project teams that work continuously with the same clients, it helps us to more accurately budget for jobs, and also produce the work a lot more efficiently which is good for us, and great for our clients.

What tools do you use to manage time and job tasks?

We use Basecamp for client communications, and an internal ‘Timesheets system’ which tracks tasks, time spent etc. We’ve never found a tool that is perfect, and I don’t think this exists. With our own custom-built system we have built a lot of reporting about project efficiency, chargeable time, utilisation etc. Forecasting is always the tricky things, as projects sometimes change in scope midway.

Any suggestions on dealing with difficult clients?

Tim and I are fortunate to have a strong management team, and they’re great at helping deal with difficult clients. We have had good success with being very open and honest with difficult clients, explaining that it’s a two-way street and both their business and our business have to be happy.

Sometimes a difficult client is not the right client, and it’s a matter of parting ways. In this scenario we try and make sure there is a great hand-over to someone else, and will even offer to help them find another agency that may be better suited.

What’s your or the company’s biggest challenge currently?

Keeping up with the opportunities, and knowing when to say no. We are fortunate to be working with really amazing clients, and this means being a lot fussier about new projects we take on. But this is easier said than done!

What particular skill set do you look for in your new hires?

Cultural fit is the #1 thing we hire for. Generally if we hire smart people that are a good cultural fit, the skills we can help develop in people through training and processes.

How do you ensure that your team is performing well, and focused on the same goals? Do you have any special team activities that you do to maintain a good culture?

We ask them, both casually and formally. One formal thing we do is a quarterly staff survey, which asks people how happy they are in their job, what we’re doing well, what we’re doing not so well, how we can help them be happier in their job. We use the eNPS (look it up) measure as a scorecard of how we’re doing across each office, and make sure we’re continuously improving.

To keep people focused on the same goals we try to reiterate our company vision often, in different contexts. This is sometimes a challenge as we don’t want to ram the vision down people’s throats, but we want everyone to be pointing in the same direction.

We do lots of small fun things that demonstrate our culture, I love our Big Breakfast which is every 3 weeks where our GM cooks for the whole team. For some reason I always seem to be travelling on this day though!

The post Interview with Tim O’Neill, Reactive appeared first on Digital Nation.