On Tuesday the 13th of December we went and spoke to Richard Shearman who was the Assistant creative director of Sequence. Sequence is a new media company based in Cardiff and is the biggest new media company in Wales. We proposed 5 questions for him to gain an insight into how the company gains its work and then approaches the project. The questions that we gave to Richard were the following;
· Is the majority of your business client based of speculative work?
· How is your team structured in terms of in-house and freelance expertise?
· What standardized project cycle model on each job?
· How do you encourage collaborative working and successful communication with your clients?
· How do your test your work before completion?
Richard Shearman gave us an in-depth answer to them all. Sequence has a main client base which is 40 – 50% and then the rest is Speculative work. They produce work that they think a company might like and receive invitation to tender. When they receive an invitation to tender they send a selection of visuals to the prospective client and see if they win the contract with the client. If they win the contract with the client the paperwork is drawn up. The next stages are completed at the beginning of the project;
Initiation of project
Cost implications
KPI
Contract
Technical Specification
Specifications
There are several Sections that the customer is always apart of;
Agree Methodology
A Design workshop with the customer to show them ideas
Pro Forma is completed
Visuals are signed off
Client is handed work after the functionality has been added.
Working with clients to work on those ideas
The time for a project Varies depending on the complexity of the project. Once all of this has been signed off then the project goes into development. It is then test with the Quality inspection team and then ready for deployment.
They use different models for different tasks but the main one that they stick too is DSDM (Dynamic System Development Method).
DSDM comes from the Rapid application Design method which is used in software development. It consists of 3 parts including the pre-project, project life cycle and the post project phase. This uses prototypes and development tools throughout the project. This method is made up of 9 key principles.
The first main part is user involvement; with this sequence can create work with the client to assess what there wants and needs are.
They don’t have to wait for higher member of the team to approve the work they can approve it themselves. This improves the time on a project.
They use a method within this that the designer will create something that is good enough rather than perfect. This means there is more time for testing of the product and adding what the user wants.
This method concentrates on the functionality and is driven by the user’s feedback.
They make sure that all changes are reversible so if the client decides to change anything you don’t have to start again this is a big part of the project and can save a lot time and money.
The project time and specification is outlined at the beginning of the project.
It concentrates on the main functions of the project and getting them working well and functional rather than worrying about the less important parts of the project.
Testing is done throughout the project rather than saving it to the end.
Communication with everyone in the project is essential.
With this method it allows sequence to be more flexible, it allows the customer to feel part of the team and allows them to make decisions.
Some projects will need a more rigid approach, the will use the PRINCE2 method for this to keep the flow of the project. For example if sequence were making a flyer for someone there wouldn’t be a need for lots of testing the project would be very small. PRINCE2 is more process driven and there is more control on the project. There 8 main principles in PRINCE2.
1. Starting up a project
2. Planning
3. Initiating a project
4. Directing a project
5. Controlling a Stage
6. Managing project delivery
7. Managing Stage Boundaries
8. Closing a project
Within this method everything is signed of by the project managers and all of the stages are easy to see but because this is so rigid, it works better on smaller projects rather than large scale projects where flexibility is required.
We found out that sequence is incredibly customer focused, they have specific teams that are there just work with the clients on a one 2 one basis so the client is not passed around from pillar to post. There new business, deal with any new clients that want to work with sequence. When a customer gives sequence an invitation to tender they go through a number of stages to get the through the project. They also assign staff that they think the customer will work well with. This stops any clashes and bad service that customer may feel there getting. Everything that requires testing at sequence is done in isolation first before being placed within the final piece of work. Once all the work is done up to the final stage the design and development team work together to put the final piece together. This is then passed on to the quality inspection team that with test the entire product before it goes out to deployment. In some cases there may be some expert testing involved, for example sequence has done some pro bono work for some disability websites. These required special testing for the people the website is for. There are a couple of ways they do this.
Profile testing- This is where they role play as the individual that they are designing it for and then for when there not able to do this they recruit people with the condition to test the project for them. All of sequences web based work which is 70% of there work is done to the W3C standard where clients are encouraged to have the websites at a level 2 standard but this can be costly and are mainly level 1 but they do have sites created to a level 3 standards.
England and Finney wrote how production processes should work in practice but as you can see it doesn’t always work out the way as planned.
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