It seems like a lot of businesses today create project teams.
There are teams assigned to new business opportunities.
There are teams tasked with making something more efficient.
And there are teams that have the task of making something better.
One example of the latter is a website redesign team.
I’ve had different perspectives on these types of projects over the years. I’ve worked as part of a team. I’ve been the leader of a small team and I’ve seen it from the outside as Sarah Lynn Design works with clients.
These are my suggestions for putting your website redesign project team together.
Have A Representative From Each Silo
“Silo” gets a bad rap in today’s business world.
I’m not entirely sure why. In my experience, silos can be a good thing. it’s just something humans do naturally. We find people like us and congregate. It seems to work so why fight it?
When you put a project team together it’s good to have one person from each silo in the business. This person will be the point of contact for that silo. They might not always get what they want, but they’ll be there with an understanding of why decisions are being made.
You’re looking for people that can contribute to the project, but also people that are available. If someone is busy working on other things in the business look for someone else to fill the role on the redesign team.
Keep The Team Small
The more people you bring to the project the more headaches you’re going to have.
One representative from each silo and a leader.
That’s it.
Don’t make it more complicated than it needs to be.
Have Sanity Checks Throughout The Process
However, with a small team it’s easy to get caught up in the project.
It’s good to send the progress to outsiders from time to time.
You’re not looking to use all of their feedback to make changes.
Instead, you’re looking for any big items that you’re missing. You don’t want to get to the end of the project only to have someone look at the new site and point out something obvious and simple.
Sanity checks can help prevent this.
Appoint A Leader With Veto Power
This is important.
The team will disagree on things.
You need someone on the team that has the power to make a decision. It’s not a democracy. This person is the judge. They will use the business values and guidelines as their guide. Let those values make the decisions.
You might come across times when two ideas are good for the website, but both can’t be done in a reasonable amount of time.
The leader will have the final say.
This keeps the project moving forward instead of falling into website purgatory.
Communicate With The Entire Company
This is the job of the leader or in some cases the job of the CEO or President of the company.
From the moment you decide to redesign the website this person should send out a company wide email explaining that a few will be chosen for the team.
The, throughout the process, emails should be sent out to keep people in the loop.
You might even send a screenshot of the progress to everyone.
Ask for feedback. Let them know that you’ll consider all feedback, but that it won’t be possible to take action on every piece of feedback.
Communicate that the website team will make decisions based on the company values.
Then if anyone has an argument about something they can argue with the values and not with a specific person.
Conclusion
Redesign projects can be stressful, frustrating things.
I’ve been on a few of them and it’s easy for everyone to feel like their voice isn’t being heard.
It’s the job of the leader to keep the focus of the project on the business values while making sure everyone knows the reason why decisions have to be made.
That’s all people want – communication.
What did I miss?
What have you done to build your project teams?
