Notes

SMS marketing has emerged as a powerful tool for brands, but with its growing effectiveness comes more guidelines. Brands that aren't up to speed on SMS compliance run the risk of paying for messages that get blocked by carriers, such as AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, and never delivered.

Guidelines around SMS marketing are ever-changing, but some common reasons a carrier may block a brand's text messages include lacking consent, opt-out instructions, or exceeding frequency limits.

Beyond compliance, there are other guidelines to keep in mind developing an SMS marketing strategy, such as quiet hours. Quiet hours are times during the day to avoid sending text messages. While there are no federal laws for quiet hours, the TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991) and FCC guidance suggest sending messages between 8 am and 9 pm in the recipient's local time zone. Some states, like Florida, Oklahoma, and Washington, are more strict, shortening the time to 8 pm. The safest bet for brands? Stick to the 8 am to 8 pm.

SMS marketing guidelines and compliance can feel like a lot to understand and manage, but platforms like Postscript are building these guidelines into their product. For instance, if a subscriber triggers automation or a campaign is sent during quiet hours, Postscript will hold sending until waking hours begin in the subscriber's time zone.

Here are some easy tips for managing an effective SMS program:

• Warm up recipients with simple messages free of sales language and links.
• Maintain a reasonable frequency of texts to avoid opt-outs and blacklisting.
• Encourage replies to increase engagement. We've all received messages asking us to "Reply YES" if we're interested.
• Make it easy for recipients to opt-in and opt-out of messages.
• Keep content relevant to the recipient and make it clear who is sending the messages.

This post originally appeared in Edition No. 144 of my newsletter. Subscribe here.

Post-purchase surveys go beyond gathering feedback—they are a powerful tool for understanding customers and making strategic decisions that drive business success.

Here are example questions a brand might ask and why they matter:

"What other products do you wish you could purchase?"

By exploring customers' desired products, you uncover untapped market opportunities. This valuable insight can help expand your offerings to better suit their needs. For example, a coffee brand could consider adding creamer options to enhance the overall coffee experience.

"Which brands did you consider before choosing ours?"

Understanding customers' alternatives sheds light on your competitors' strengths and weaknesses. This knowledge allows you to align your brand's unique value proposition, refine your positioning, and stand out from the competition.

"How do you plan to use our product?"

Customers often find innovative ways to use products that may surprise you. By asking this question, you uncover popular or unknown use cases, providing opportunities to enhance your product offerings and stay ahead of evolving customer needs.

While there are more intricate tactics for gathering customer insights, post-purchase surveys capture customers when they're engaged and excited about their recent purchase. Seizing this moment ensures higher response rates and more authentic feedback.

At Barrel, we're fans of Fairing and how they help our clients get to know their customers.

This post originally appeared in Edition No. 143 of my newsletter. Subscribe here.

One of the most common reasons customers cancel subscriptions for products like skincare and food is that they have too many products. A cool feature of ARPU is they make it easy for customers to delay their subscription via the "shipping soon notification" email. Even if the customer ultimately cancels, the brand is able to keep the customer engaged for another month or two. This revenue adds up!

This post originally appeared in Edition No. 142 of my newsletter. Subscribe here.

Customer segmentation and personalization may seem daunting, especially for emerging e-commerce brands, but they present valuable opportunities that many can achieve with less effort than they think.

A great starting point for brands is to focus on their email and SMS strategies and redefine their perception of a mailing list, which should live in Klaviyo. Rather than viewing it as a repository for capturing names and emails, brands should treat their mailing list as a robust database with valuable customer information, ranging from birthdates to personal preferences. For instance, beauty and skincare brands can collect data on customers' skincare concerns, while athletic apparel brands can gather information on their favorite ways to stay active.

There are several straightforward ways to begin building customer profiles:

1. Import past purchase data from Shopify.
2. Implement a quiz with Octane.ai to capture customers' quiz selections.
3. Request additional information through pop-ups or follow-up emails when users join the newsletter.

While more advanced techniques exist, these steps serve as an excellent starting point. By leveraging these simple approaches, brands can create more personalized communication that resonates with their customers.

Personalized communication can take various forms depending on the brand. Brands offering a wide range of products can tailor email and SMS to showcase different products and categories. Meanwhile, brands with a smaller product offering can still achieve personalization by adjusting imagery. For example, featuring lifestyle imagery that reflects the customer's familiar environment can foster a sense of closeness and connection.

This post originally appeared in Edition No. 141 of my newsletter. Subscribe here.

I'm excited about a call I had today with a company called Treet. They've created a turnkey resale platform for brands to offer their customers. I love the focus on sustainability and the unique opportunity for brands to strengthen customer loyalty by offering a new way to engage (with the brand and their community). Treet claims that brands can expect an incremental revenue increase of between 3-10%. They support every type of resale model, from peer-to-peer to trade-in, and even have paths for brands to liquidate unsellable or returned inventory. I'm excited to find opportunities to collaborate with them.

This post originally appeared in Edition No. 139 of my newsletter. Subscribe here.

Today, I had a conversation with a prospective client at a baby brand. What's intriguing about customers in this space is that a significant proportion of them are first-time parents. Although they conduct extensive research, they typically put their top products on a registry and may never interact with the brand of choice.

The challenge for baby brands is to establish a connection with these customers and remain relevant for future child-related purchases or family gifts. I see a major opportunity for these brands to invest in educational content via email and other channels, such as guidance on product evaluation and what to consider regarding certifications and safety measures, to position themselves as experts and build trust with potential customers (and of course, grab their contact info).

This post originally appeared in Edition No. 137 of my newsletter. Subscribe here.

I recently chatted with the former E-comm Director of a large apparel brand. They told me how the brand had started tapping into their growing retail stores for e-commerce fulfillment, a network of over 70 stores at the time. When the customer received their shipment, they’d also receive a handwritten note from their local store. Customers not only felt more connected to the brand and more inclined to shop again, many of them discovered they could shop in-store for the first time and came in for a visit.

This post originally appeared in Edition No. 135 of my newsletter. Subscribe here.

When a prospective project doesn't work out, we make a point to ask the client for feedback about our proposal and what led to their decision. Sometimes, clients provide input but, more often than not, they're vague or don't respond.

We're naturally more eager to hear where we fell short than why we succeeded, but I'm noticing how insightful it is to gather feedback regardless of the outcome. I've made a note to myself to do this more often. Fortunately, clients have been more receptive lately, giving us helpful feedback even when they choose to work with us.

In addition to client feedback, I've occasionally shared our proposals with tech partners for their thoughts. Agency partner managers get exposure to how other agencies work and what challenges are top of mind for merchants. I'm always interested in what they have to say.

With that in mind, the client feedback we've received, plus takeaways from chatting with tech partners, has been fruitful. As we prepare each new proposal, I've enjoyed applying these insights to how we position ourselves and propose work.

Updates

Below are some of the ways we've evolved our recent proposals:

Highlighting our history & POV

We've been experimenting with how we touch on our history as an agency in our decks and proposals. For instance, highlighting that we've been in business for nearly 17 years can help build trust with clients from day one. Similarly, noting we've been working with Shopify since 2009 and in the Plus partner program since 2017 can alleviate any client concerns about our expertise and comfort level with Shopify.

In addition to our background, a few clients have raised the same questions about our experience and thoughts on key topics, such as accessibility and site performance. We have a strong POV but haven't been great about sharing it. Our proposals now include slides outlining our perspective, protocol, and recommendations.

Expanding our case studies

We're limiting the number of case studies we share with clients to three or four. At the same time, we're going deeper within each to focus on what makes each project unique.

For a while now, our case studies were one-page, but we've expanded them to three at a minimum and feature:

• Client background
• Project Overview
• Engagement Overview (e.g. support & optimization, website UX/design & development, etc.)
• Client Ecommerce Stack
• At least four key features/highlights (includes image/video, headline, and description)

Our new case studies leverage assets we've created for social to reduce the effort needed to create them. We're also building a reference list of the most common features/highlights for brainstorming what to include.

Proposing multiple approach options

In early 2020, we sent out our fair share of 3-option proposals after going through Blair Enns's Win Without Pitching workshop but eventually lost momentum. Flash forward, and we're back at it. For now, multi-proposal options are standard for most potential projects and have helped avoid losses solely due to pricing.

In addition to receiving positive feedback from clients, creating multi-option proposals has inspired us to get creative about adding value for the client vs. designing one approach to accomplish their goals. Looking ahead, we see an opportunity to level up by exploring ROI for each option based on the client's current business performance and goals.

Suggesting future initiatives and opportunities

Until now, our proposals included retainer pricing and a suggested plan for clients to consider after launch (for new websites or redesigns). Now, we're going a step further and taking the time to brainstorm what initiatives might be valuable for the client. From creating a bundle builder to designing a post-purchase experience, it's been nice to go beyond the initial project and help the clients think long-term.

Collaborating with tech partners

Earlier this year, I wrote about narrowing our e-commerce tech stack and strengthening our relationship with tech partners. Since then, it's been amazing to see what's possible, whether bringing them in on projects or getting their advice on handling unique client requests.

We're now highlighting our recommended tech partners in our proposals, touching on how we collaborate, and even showing how they can drive ROI for our clients. Sometimes this comes from brainstorming with tech partners during the sales process.

Looking Ahead

It's too soon to see whether these updates are making a difference yet, and there are so many variables that we may never know what sticks for a client. However, we'll continue improving through tracking activitiy and requesting feedback.

This post originally appeared in Edition No. 135 of my newsletter. Subscribe here.

We once had an Account Lead whose update for weekly account status check-ins would frequently read: "All is good." I trusted this person, so I had no reason to assume all was not good on the project or with the client. However, as time passed, I noticed a pattern with this person's accounts.

New initiatives or tasks always seemed urgent. They'd cite other team members or even the client when situations didn't go as planned. If hours were trending over, they would act as if it happened overnight.

All in all, anything that didn't go well appeared to come out of nowhere. It was frustrating. Going from "all is good" to red alert was an emotional rollercoaster for me and anyone involved. When I jumped in to help manage the situation, I'd often be surprised to learn how unhappy the client had been with us for a while. Unfortunately, a few of these situations led to clients decreasing services or moving on. In one instance, I discovered our client had just begun exploring other partners. Luckily, we prompted a discussion early enough to turn things around.

All was not good.

I always carved out time to debrief with the Account lead, but we did not see much progress before they chose to move on. I never fully uncovered what led to the continued oversight of their accounts.

Were they looking at the world through rose-colored glasses?

Were they unwilling or unsure how to take ownership of their accounts?

Were they not curious enough not to dig in with clients to understand their needs?

Were they afraid to ask clients for feedback?

While it was sad not to see the Account Lead improve, I walked away with a valuable lesson: When it feels like "all is good" with a client, assume there's something you're overlooking. While it's important to continually get curious about the client, solicit feedback, and confirm the relationship is on the right track, "all is good" is a signal to go deeper.

These days, I've made it a habit to dig in further when I hear "all is good" from an Account Lead or I notice myself thinking the same during my weekly accounts review with the Barrel partners. The truth is that even when all is good, there's always a more specific update to provide that can lead to further insights. I remember one situation when digging deeper with an Account Lead surfaced a projected overage on a project. With this information, we could proactively get ahead of it and course-correct, ending the project on time and within budget.

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We've made several changes to accounts management at Barrel over the last couple of years. The most notable changes have been designing a Weekly Accounts System, keeping projects on track and centralizing decision-making, and introducing Executive Sponsors, a member of Barrel leadership accountable for strengthening the client relationship, specifically with executive stakeholders.

This post originally appeared in Edition No. 130 of my newsletter. Subscribe here.

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Last week, Shopify released 100+ product updates in their 2023 Winter Edition. Some of these are already available, while others are coming soon. There are a ton of exciting updates, but here are the 10 that caught my eye:

1. Drag-and-drop checkout editor for more brand consistency, plus app integration for extended functionality: Clients often ask how we can make checkout feel more like an extension of their brand and website. These updates will be a game-changer for more turnkey customization and merchants looking for a more advanced robust cart/checkout experience.
2. Shop Promise badge (on product pages) will display smart delivery dates backed by a limited guarantee: Maybe it's just me, but this feels like a response to Amazon's Buy with Prime value prop. Either way, I'm excited to see this in action and think it can be effective in building customer trust and confidence. Shopify claims up to 25% life in conversion.
3. Deeper Shop Pay integration (one-click checkout & using passkeys for accounts): As a customer, I've loved the ease of Shop Pay. It's great to see Shopify embed it further into the customer journey. One-click checkout will make repeat purchases seamless. On the accounts side, we see more clients opting to go live without account pages, but leaving customers to rely on email alone can be tough. Making account creation and management easy with Shop Pay will be a value-add to merchants and customers alike. Great thread from Shopify Senior Product Lead, Patrick, here.
4. AI-generated storefront content (Shopify Magic), e.g. use keywords to generate product descriptions: Copy is often a pain point for clients, so I'll be curious to see how effective/easy this is to use. I'm sure we'll see AI continue to show up more in all aspects of e-commerce.
5. Improved search & recommendations: Smart, suggestive search has become the expected functionality for e-commerce stores with more than a handful of SKUs. It's nice to see Shopify's focus on Search and leveraging data across Shopify to improve it.
6. Introducing Metaobjects, allowing merchants to create reusable, custom content: Like the drag-and-drop checkout editor, this feels like another step in the "no-code" direction. As an avid-Webflow user, I'm loving this update. I'm also looking forward to seeing how our designers can weigh in on what should be a metaobject, based on how they structure their design files.
7. Product Bundles: Finally, the new Shopify Bundles app will make product bundling easy for merchants — a long-time request we've heard from clients.
8. More Shop app customization (branding, shop experiences, etc): I don't hear many people talking about the Shop app; however, I think it can be a powerful tool for customers and merchants alike. It's interesting to see Shopify investing in new features. It makes me wonder if an Amazon-like experience is a long-term vision. I'll be eager to see if this drives adoption.
9. Translate & adapt app, making it easy to localize store content across markets: We see this request a lot, especially for skincare and beauty clients with different laws/guidelines by region. This will be a powerful upgrade across the board.
10. Integrated marketing automation for re-engagement with Shopify Email: I didn't expect to see Shopify prioritizing email, but so far, it looks like a solid offering for merchants who don't need or want to invest in a more robust email offering with Klaviyo.

Check out the Shopify 2023 Winter Edition page for the full list of updates, along with more details, documentation, and explainer videos.

This post originally appeared in Edition No. 127 of my newsletter. Subscribe here.

I wrote a post back in July about recording client calls and why I thought it would be worthwhile to implement across the agency. We've since gotten better about this and seen a positive impact on projects.

For whatever reason, we didn't consider recording new business calls at the time, but as of late December, we decided to instate the same practice using Grain. It hasn't been long, but it's already proving to be a worthwhile change.

We started recording calls when our Director of Business Development, Dan, was out on paternity leave. We were having conversations that we thought would be helpful for him to review when he returned. In doing this, we saw benefits in making this a standard practice:

Training opportunity. There are quirks to every new business call. Having never met the client (in most cases), you never know what to expect. Recording calls is a helpful way to reflect on and learn from these conversations, whether they go our way or not. For example, the team references a call recording as a model for how to lead, or the call lead reviews the recording to see how they could improve the dialogue. Last week, I led a chat with a prospective client who appeared to be on vacation and seemed impatient with me inquiring about their business. They were happy with the call by the end, but I left thinking it would be a great case study to review in the future. Luckily, we got it recorded.

Team onboarding. It's always important to take notes on calls, but notes only capture what the note-taker thought was worth writing down, which changes from person to person. When getting the team involved in working on proposals and scoping new projects, recording calls make it easy for them to go back and hear first-hand how the project began. I recently jumped in to help put together an approach for a project for a client who I hadn't met yet. I reviewed the initial call recording and saw the client mentioned challenges with the communication style of a former agency. When it came time to present our approach, I leaned into being upfront and open with them. After the call, they sent us an email to tell us we were frontrunners, noting our "transparency and authenticity."

Future reference. It can take weeks, sometimes months, or even years, to land a new deal. Having all calls with a prospective client recorded for reference can help eliminate gaps along the way and avoid us asking the same question twice. We're very close to signing a new project with a client we've been talking to since August 2022. Unfortunately, we don't have recordings of all the calls since then; however, since the scope has changed several times, I could see the benefit of having recorded calls as a reference.

For anyone thinking about recording new business calls, here are a few considerations to keep in mind:

• If you plan to get into potentially sensitive details about the client's business, it's worth getting an NDA signed before the call. I've had calls end early because the client didn't feel comfortable sharing much without an NDA. Recording the call can add another level of concern.
• Ask everyone on the call if they're comfortable being recorded, and explain why you're recording. No one likes to hear a voiceover saying the call is being recorded without permission ahead of time.
• Don't forget to record. This one seems obvious, but it's easy to forget! We've had it happen already.

For more on leading new business calls, I wrote a comprehensive guide (relating new business to speed dating) in a previous newsletter. You can read it here.

This post originally appeared in Edition No. 122 of my newsletter. Subscribe here.

In April, we began re-imagining how we communicate and collaborate with our clients. Inspired by Domino's pizza tracker, we narrowed the scope of what we share with clients, focusing only on what's important. These efforts led to us moving all clients into a "Project/Client Tracker," built with Google sheets. Yes, Google sheets!

For fixed-fee projects, clients have:

• Launch date (with assumptions)
• Project schedule
• Change log

For retainers, clients have:

• Weekly burn report
• Monthly/quarterly initiatives with estimates

While both trackers have been well-received by clients, we recently noticed a blind spot with our retainer clients — initiatives don't have client-facing schedules. We do monthly planning with clients to determine priorities, but there is no system for outlining the timeline later.

I chatted with Kate, Director of Client Services, about this last week and learned that Account Leads have been creating versions on their own for some accounts but not all. The good news is that task-level schedules exist in some places; the bad news is they are not everywhere or consistent.

Luckily, this is a pretty straightforward solve. I'm looking forward to hashing it out with Kate this week, then rolling it out with the team.

This post originally appeared in Edition No. 114 of my newsletter. Subscribe here.

One of our maxims at Barrel is All Feedback is Information. For us, feedback is an easy way to get input from co-workers about how they experience us so we can identify what's working/not working and how we can improve. Without it, we're missing an opportunity to learn and grow through real input vs. our assumptions, which may or may not paint a brighter picture than reality.

We talk about feedback with the team often and do our best to facilitate feedback conversations as needed. More recently, though, we've been thinking about other ways to normalize giving and receiving regular feedback instead of waiting on designated times of the year (such as performance reviews) or difficult situations.

Last week, we launched an experiment using Lattice. Leveraging Lattice's feedback feature, we requested feedback (anonymous for now) for our Team Leads and select team members from folks they worked closely with in the past few months. We left responses open-ended to let folks focus on what's important to them. So far, we've appreciated the team's candid and thorough responses.

After all the feedback is collected, managers will package and share the feedback. Documentation will likely happen in Lattice to keep everything centralized.

Looking ahead, we believe regular feedback will be integral to performance management at Barrel. We'll still have one or two planned performance reviews per year, but conversations can be happening all the time. Peer feedback will be based on more recent events, not generalized for months at a time.

Long term, our vision is that everyone feels comfortable discussing feedback among co-workers, and individually, every team member knows where they stand and has development areas to tackle.

Read related posts on feedback here.

This post originally appeared in Edition No. 114 of my newsletter. Subscribe here.

With a new year on the horizon, running planning sessions with our retainer clients is a top priority. Whether or not the client's contract is coming to a close in December, it is an opportunity for both teams to zoom out, align on objectives, and discuss opportunities to work together more effectively. It also helps us project how much a client will spend with us in the coming year.

We created a template to guide this year's sessions. The Account Lead will be working with the project team to prepare. The deck covers the following areas:

• Recap of work we've done this year: an opportunity to celebrate accomplishments and show our value-add as a partner
• Feedback discussion on ways of working: an open discussion between both teams, using curated topics to prompt discussion
• Future business initiatives/priorities for 2023 (presented by the client): a chance to dig into what's top of mind for the client and why
• Opportunities we see for the future (presented by Barrel): ideas we have to help the client achieve their goals (may or may not be on their radar)

As we start getting these sessions on the calendar, there are a few open items I'll be discussing with our Director of Client Services, Kate, this week.

1. Pre-sending clients' future business initiatives: What is the best way to surface their initiatives earlier so the team can digest them when planning for the session? We want to ensure any ideas we bring to the table are relevant to the client's plans for the coming year.
2. Preparing for the meeting: We are discussing how to format internal preparation sessions with the project team. Assuming we have gathered priorities from the client, we see this as an opportunity to reflect on the year as a team and brainstorm how we can increase our value and strengthen our collaboration with the client in the new year.

This post originally appeared in Edition No. 114 of my newsletter. Subscribe here.

The fun thing about writing is looking back at where ideas began to understand the thinking and whether or not the original intent panned out.

In May, I wrote about better connecting the dots between Business Development and Client Services through more collaboration early in the process (read here). It has been amazing to see the progress since then, most recently inviting Dan, our Director of Business Development, to a daily standup that used to include only the Team Leads involved in implementation.

Bringing Dan into this touchpoint, along with many other changes in how we collaborate, has prompted some great conversations about how we scope projects and set ourselves up for success in implementation.

I'm excited about the continued discussions last week because I could see the vision clicking for the Team Leads. I thought it would be worth committing these ideas to writing to reference later and sort through them myself.

Vision

Over the years, we've learned one of the most effective ways to evolve our process is through the SOWs we create during Business Development. Why? It is the first time we look at the client's needs, figure out how much effort it will take to meet them, and then commit to a timeline and budget.

This fact underscores the importance for:

• Projects to look the same when they get signed as when they begin
• Clients to understand what they are and aren't getting in scope
• Client and project team to speak the same language, specifically regarding process and deliverables

Close Business Development and Client Services team collaboration coupled with the seemingly subtle process changes outlined below will be a good step toward achieving this vision. We've come a long way already.

1) Scoping & Requirements Gathering

Our Business Development team has been running requirements workshops with clients for several months. In the workshop, they dig into the client's website needs to help formulate a proposal, using a spreadsheet as a guide. More recently, we've gotten our Strategy team involved in fleshing out the details of our requirements and even leading the call with the client.

In recent deals, we've seen a trend with clients looking for more details on the cost and effort for all aspects of our proposal, prompting us to think more about what other conversations we can have during the "requirements gathering" workshop.

As a first step, we've evolved our Requirements spreadsheet to capture the deliverables and milestones of our process. We can then estimate our time against these steps and get a better view of whether or not we can hit the client's desired timeline and feature set. We've seen time and time again how simple shifts in the process (adding or removing deliverables, extra revisions) can impact the timeline and budget.

The next iteration of our spreadsheet is mapping out common project types. The goal here is to have a base approach for different scenarios that we can begin with, cutting down the time it takes to get to a proposal.

Some examples of project types include:

• Shopify Build: Custom (Design & Development to start)
• Alternate: Sprint-Based/Phased Approach
• Shopify Build: Theme Modification
• Website Audit

Each scenario will include a rough schedule, process steps, requirements estimates, and a staffing plan. The key here is getting all Team Leads' input captured, so there is no need to reinvent the wheel after the project gets signed.

We are not saying that every project will be the same or that they'll fit into these buckets exactly. However, we already tend to categorize leads into buckets and often try using the last similar instance as a starting point. While this works to a degree, it is a reactive way of working and makes every shift feel like an edge case.

Relevant Reading:

• BL&T No. 092: Services or Skills?
• BL&T No. 102: Strategy Team Progress
• Project Org Charts

2) SOW (Scope of Work)

With scenario-based scoping, the scope of work is the next area for standardization, taking base requirements for each project type and mapping it into an SOW. We recently updated our SOW to better outline our process with relevant details within each phase. Having this in place will make the process that much easier.

The goals here are:

• Clients can more easily connect the dots between the requirements workshop and the scope of work, understanding what's within the scope and how we'll collaborate.
• The project team can reference the SOW as a step-by-step guide for completing the project.

Relevant Reading:

• Collaborative Proposals
• SOW (Scope of Work) as SOP (Standard Operating Procedure)

3) Project Tracker & Asana

This year, we overhauled how we use tools as a team and with clients. These changes involved rolling out a Project Tracker (created in Google Sheets), highlighting the most critical information for clients: project launch date, a project schedule, and a change log. For those interested, we use Basecamp for client comms. Another shift was using Asana exclusively for team task management.

Building off the idea that the SOW is a guide for the implementation team, the Project Tracker will be another touchpoint to connect the dots to the various approaches outlined in scenario-based SOWs. We're imagining the Project Trackers could directly reference aspects of the requirements spreadsheet and SOW, so there's less upfront work to get it ready, speeding up the time it takes to get a project off the ground.

With tight scoping during the requirements gathering workshop, there is an opportunity to tie these tasks into Asana. This connection could cut down the time it takes a Project Manager to get an Asana board up and running for the team. I'm also curious to explore whether or not a CSV template could further improve this process.

Relevant Reading:

• Pizza Tracker, Project Tracker

4) Requirements as a Guide

Requirements! Quite a hot topic lately. With the requirements workshop in place, we know a good deal about a project before it begins. The missing piece is how that translates to the implementation team.

Looking ahead, the Strategy team will be taking the lead here. Strategists will not only be helping lead the upfront workshops with clients but also be responsible for creating a JIRA board at the project start. The board will include tickets for everything we know at that point.

Throughout the project, these tickets will act as a "spec" for designers and developers. The only way this will be a success is if they're used in every discussion and updated when/if things change.

When designs get signed off, we'll be able to move more quickly into development since the tickets will already be up-to-date. When it comes time for QA and testing, we'll have requirements centralized for reference.

We've had some recent discussions around QA and how to make sure we're testing all use cases of a given feature. What excites me about this process is the clarity of where changes like this can happen, such as the requirements spreadsheet, which then impacts how we structure JIRA tickets.

Related:

• Embedding Requirements into Our Process
• Rethinking QA (Quality Assurance)

Going Forward

There are aspects of our process I'm not covering here and many others to continue exploring. For instance, we've made strides in getting Client Services to run client orientation but are working on other ways to improve that handoff.

I chose to focus on the above areas because I believe delivering on them can improve delivery for our clients, increase efficiency, and as a result, project profitability.

I hope that these changes will also:

• Reduce confusion and uncertainty at the project start and throughout the process.
• Help our team see the many ways a project can get done vs. view anything that deviates from our typical process as an edge case
• Surface more creative ways to get the work done efficiently, by taking the time to dig into requirements and processes for each scenario.
• Help clients understand what goes into a project, how they can impact time/budget, and ultimately, have a clearer picture of what their scope includes.