Agile Scrum Project Management.

By using established best-practice methodologies to manage our projects, we ensure quality and reliability of service delivery.

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One of the biggest complaints I hear from small businesses is that their web development agency doesn’t manage their project properly. At the beginning, it’s all sunshine and lollypops, but as soon as the paperwork is signed, they barely hear from them again until, some months later, they hand over a half-finished website that isn’t what the client wanted in the first place.

There are two CRITICAL lessons that web development agencies must learn in order to effectively deliver projects:

The client is a key part of the project team. It's their project, not yours. There are hundreds of little decisions to be made throughout the lifecycle of a project, and if they're not thoroughly engaged and making these decisions, the outcome of the project won't be what they're looking for.
Project management needs to be proactive, not reactive. If you’re the PM, and the first time you’re hearing about a ticket is when it’s gone wrong, then you’re not doing your job.

Large agencies working with large budgets have the luxury of being able to assign permanent PM staff to projects, and providing they’re all working to the same methodology, then things tend to get done.

The real challenge lies with small business websites, where the budgets don’t allow for full time project management, but the same level of service still needs to be delivered. So what’s the secret?

Well, it just so happens that there IS a way to deliver high-quality outcomes without the implied costs, by following the principles of the Agile Manifesto. The Agile Manifesto, however, isn't a project management methodology, it's just a set of principles. That’s where Scrum and Kanban step in.

Our methodology here at Assembler is a mix of Scrum and Kanban. We’ve taken some of the structural elements of Scrum and mixed in the more fluid workflow of Kanban, to find a middle ground that works well with our clients, and yet gives us the structure we need to manage a project day to day.

We also tend to spend a fair bit of time planning projects up front, “Waterfall” style, so that you as the client have a clearer understanding of the costs involved from the outset. We live in the agency world like everyone else, and we certainly understand that you’re going to want an estimate before commencing work!

At the end of the day, the most important thing is that you, as the client, are involved throughout the lifecycle of the project, helping to make decisions on a day to day basis, and getting to know what’s being built and deployed as it happens. That’s the way we like to run our projects around here at Assembler, so if this sounds like the sort of thing you’re looking for, get in touch with us below!