Death Of A Web Team

Once upon a time, long ago, but not so long — like the mid 1990’s — there was a Web team. Like many other teams of its kind it was made up of highly skilled and highly motivated Web professionals with a wealth of experience. At the time they were the darlings of the middle management as well as many mucky-mucks at the large, middle American company they worked for. And all was good in their world.

The Web team, being highly motivated and having the company’s best interests at heart, did all it could to move with the ever changing fast paced world of the web. They kept their skills fresh. They improved upon the work of those that came before them. They planned and hoped to pave the way for those who would come after them. They were all very good at their jobs and company was better for it.

They learned about usability, accessibility and forward thinking design and coding practices. They began to strive for a more transactional Web for their company and it’s related sites, while at the same time making these sites more fluid and flexible, separating content from structure in an effort to make them easier to maintain and easier to use. They had a vision of spreading Web technology through the organization like wild fire. People began to embrace this vision.

They started to assess the information architecture and the content of their sites, and took steps to make these sites better organized and more clearly written. They connected with their users, learning from them, studying them, and their work very clearly benefited from this in many ways. They won awards, and began to garner much respect from their peers, and even a little around the office. Job offers became common. But they we’re all very happy where they were, thank you, Mr. Headhunter. All was well.

One day a major initiative came down from on high. A major project with high visibility for the company. An opportunity to reinforce the company’s brand as well as provide a great service to many people. It was something that everyone in the company would be using, it was important, the most important Web project they would work on to date. The web team, being highly motivated and having the companies best interests at heart, was thrilled. It was something they could be proud of, something they were looking forward to applying their experience and skills to.

They began to do research, set goals and obtain information. They began to gather those who would use this site together and find out what their needs were. For months they toiled, digging to get to the heart of what would make this site successful. Many meeting were held and things seemed to be going very well. They were well on their way to implementation. They knew what to do, and they knew how to do it right.

Then one day a meeting was called. The senior staff of the Web team was to meet with the mucky-mucks to talk about the project, as it had been a while. It was learned that an outside firm was called in to talk about how best to reinforce the brand of the company with this project. This was cause for little concern, as it seemed natural to tie the brand into this project.

To the great surprise of Web team, it was discovered that this external group was brought in to do more that just reinforce the brand. No, in fact, they were going to be designing and developing the site for the company. “Hmmm,” thought the Web team’s suddenly worried, and understandably perplexed Creative Director, “what does that mean exactly?”

“Well,” replied the rather unexperienced Creative Director of the external team, whom was later revealed to be a contractor with the external firm, “what that means is we are going to be helping your company tell its story and reinforce its brand with this project. We’re going to be providing you with a design, navigation and layout that will best convey what the company is all about, as well as using cutting-edge technologies to deliver a dynamic, interactive Web experience.”

“But,” protested the senior staff. “We’ve already done much of that. We’ve done research and user testing. We’ve gathered information, set goals and have a plan. We are working on a design, we’ve identified the best way to develop this.”

At this point a great debate began to rage, much to the chagrin of the mucky-mucks. The poor Web team was at a loss. Why would the company, whose best interests they had at heart, look beyond them for this? They understood the company’s brand, and they had every skill set needed in house to get the job done right. They had a plan, they had done the work.

The external folks didn’t seem to have a good grasp on what was really good for the company as a whole. They hadn’t done the due diligence needed to succeed. They hadn’t talked to users and learned the ways of the company. They had less experience.

Those and many other arguments were raised, and refuted. The mucky-mucks quickly put an end to all discussion and the poor senior staff of the Web team went back to tell the rest of the team the sad news. This project was no longer theirs.

The design staff was in a tizzy. They quickly began to do research on the external firm, only to find out that, while they were fairly established in the print world, they did not have much in the way of a Web portfolio. The terms “glorified graphic designers” began to be bandied about. The development staff began to poor through the code of the few sites they had built. Font tags, applets and nested tables were everywhere, obscuring the line between content and structure. Fear, resentment and tension began to build.

“What about our users?” Asked a distraught Web producer who had spent many a long hour holed up in close quarters conducting interviews and running user studies for this very project. Realizing that this was a topic that hadn’t been brought up to the mucky-mucks in a responsible manner, they senior staff scrambled to make a case for their users, knowing full well the external firm did not have the necessary skills, previous experience or access to the users that they did.

Cases were made, charts assembled and comps whipped out. It was quickly forgotten that the poor Web team had been passed over for an outside team with less experience, less skill, and less of the companies best interests at heart. The fact that the company was going to pay for this never even crossed the minds of the Web team at this point. They just wanted to do what was best for the company and their users.

Just as quickly as the cases were made, they were shot down. It was brought up that the external firm “understood” this kind of thing. How could they not? The mucky-mucks knew what they were doing. The company was in the best possible hands with this, never fear! “Just think, now you’ll have more time for that maintenance you are always complaining about!” they proclaimed. “We’ve weighed the options and found you wanting.”

Well, this was just too much to take for the Web team. It was obvious in many minds that no facts had been weighed, this course of action was inexplicable. Other’s felt that the company line needed to be towed, regardless of the decision. A division began to arise between them. Many strove to make the best of it, a small few sided with the mucky-mucks and one senior staff member left the team. The project moved forward, with out much involvement from the Web team.

Money began to change hands and the design comps and templates began to roll in. User tests were done on the sly by the Web team, but for naught, for they had no control. Templates were made, more contract developers were hired by the external team and the project quickly grew unwieldily. The Web team made a last ditch effort to bring the mucky-mucks to their senses, or at least salvage some order from the growing chaos.

A “Come to Jesus” meeting was held and some guidelines were laid out by the web team, much to the reluctance of the mucky-mucks. The development staff began to work on a more usable, accessible version of the project with their spare time. More money changed hands. More time passed.

The Web team held meetings with the external team, or rather their contractors. They did their best to influence them, providing them with all kinds of user data, spending time with them to get them up to speed on their coding and accessibility standards. Style guides were sent out, many meetings were held. Very little came of this. It was obvious that this project had a life of it’s own, over which the Web team had little influence.

It was decided to wait and see. Time passed. There were other projects, plenty of work. When the opportunities arose, some team members began to drift to other parts of the company where their skills were better respected.

After many months the project was delivered. By this time the Web team had for the most part washed their hands of the project and moved on. It had come in late and over budget. More resentment had built up in the team, and many of them were no longer engaged. Self interest had begun to take over and teamwork suffered. Once the final product was unveiled, no one on the Web team wanted to be associated with it, let alone support it.

The mucky-mucks were happy as clams. For about three weeks. Then the calls came in. People were having problems accessing parts of the site, essential content was bared from those who needed to get it. Some of the transactional elements, the servlets, weren’t working properly. Something needed to be done. A call was made to the Web team.

Look into it. Fix it. Do the job we pay you to do. Ahhh, such irony.

Being professionals, that is exactly what the remaining members of the Web team did. It was very quickly noted that the project had not been built to the standards the Web team laid out. It was pointed out that not only should it be recoded in places for maintainability and accessibility, but it should be tested with users. After all, it looked pretty good, had that nice color of blue the mucky-mucks liked, but people had problems using it. Wasn’t the site for them?

The Web team presented a scaled down, more accessible, more usable version for consideration. The look and feel could be adopted for the most part, but some of the more hard to use, unaccessible features would need to be taken out and/or replaced. In essence, no more Java applets. It might not be as exciting, said the developers, but at least people could use it without problems. To which one of the more enlightened marketing folks involved with the project replied, “I’m sick and tired of hearing about the users. Who cares? Fuck the users. We need this to be engaging and exciting!”

What’s worse, when presented with the e-mail from a blind fellow who couldn’t access the essential content his manager asked him to review, a middle manager involved with the project declared, “what is the problem, we’ll just have him print it out and one of his coworkers can read it to him.” This lead to a realization that printability was yet another problem that had to be dealt with.

At this point another team member left for greener pastures. But the ever shrinking team pressed on.

Since some of the more, ah, interactive features, were coded outside of Web standards, the Web team realized that they needed some documentation, and some source files from the external folks. Well, this became a bone of contention. It turned out that this wouldn’t be possible because of the nature of the contract. That, and they just didn’t have all of that. So even more money changed hands and the Web team got what little information and source files there were.

Some time and much head banging was spent trying to rebuild the site, making it accessible and usable, while keeping the interactive (although utterly useless) elements intact. They all knew full well there was somebody’s ego on the line here, so they did their best with a smile.

At some point it was decided by middle management that the Web team needed to make this a priority. The senior staff pointed out that the Web team was not responsible for this problem and they were doing their best with what little information they had received from the external team. Fingers began to get pointed — directly at the Web team.

They dipped into their own budget and hired one of the contractors the external Web team had used to come in and fix the site. It seemed that this “cutting-edge” technology was the problem and rather than redo the whole site with a more standard (read “dull”) technology it would be easier to just fix what was there. A few weeks later it was determined that that wasn’t going to work either. By this time the accessibility and usability issues had fallen by the wayside.

Hands flew up. The Web team was at a loss. They had provided the ideal solution, user tested and team approved, but for whatever reason the mucky-mucks wouldn’t take it. They had presented vast amounts of evidence supporting their position. Soon it was decided by the mucky-mucks that too much time and effort had been spent trying to fix this, and that the company was just going to have to deal with those who were having problems using the sire.

Shortly thereafter the remnants of this award winning, highly skilled and highly motivated Web team went their separate ways. Some into the bowels of the company, some elsewhere where the sun was shining a little brighter, the grass growing a little greener, and yet others bailed out of the Web gig all together.

What became of the site? Less than a year later a group of contractors, including one member from the original external group, was brought in to completely redesign and rebuild the site. Hopefully with the users, and the company’s, best interests at heart.

What it the moral of the story? I was hoping someone could tell me.

* * *

Afterthoughts:

Well, I’ve actually got a few morals. Let’s see. Learn from the past. Don’t cut your nose of to spite your face. Don’t be pennywise and pound foolish. Life is short and hard like a body building elf.

Some of you are probably wondering how true this is. I wish I could say it was complete fiction, but it’s a combination of things I’ve heard and things I’ve experienced, loosely patterned after an actual incident from years gone by.

If you’ve worked at any large organization, I imagine much of this will ring true, even though it’s a bit over the top. I imagine this story wouldn’t only apply to a Web team, but any team of creative folks lost in a huge company. My own experiences haven’t been quite this bad, but I’ve had a few moments of my own. Thankfully they have been few and far between, and I’ve had the opportunity to see the other side, which presents it’s own challenges, although very few excuses.

I’ve just gotten to thinking lately about what you don’t learn in school. We spend so much time talking about tableless designs, and CSS hacks, and what makes a usable site. We forget that oftentimes the biggest challenges we face have nothing to do with this kind of thing.

Teamwork is hard. Our own hard work, skills and experience can only get us so far. I know first hand how hard it is sometimes to get respect from others and I can imagine that I’ve had it pretty easy. Many times a perceived lack of respect is unintentional, and sometimes people have a vested interest in your failure.

If you’re dealing with a situation like this, my advice is to stay professional, work hard, keep you chin up and look for a graceful way out. Many times the grass really is greener. Take me, I have some of the same challenges today I did in the past, but I’m much happier where I am now.

I do miss my old Web team though - damn we were good.

There has been a few other folks out there who are thinking about and dealing with similar situations. I guess I’m not the only one. Dave wants to put users first, and my co-worker Brian has been very frustrated by a similar situation.

Anyone else have a story to tell?