Agile vs Plan driven or how in SEO Smoothie we manage the projects
Whenever I read Project Management articles I am always hit by a wall of fancy words combined in an almost not understandable sentences. This approach to present you something in a very complicated way is just not my thing.
To me, simple is good.
If you have an SEO problem and you approach us, we will follow the next simple steps: research, plan and size, explain, audit, analyse, report, readjust if needed, do the work, analyse, report…
Many other companies are obsessed with the “New” Project Management trends and are focused on optimizing the work of their employees. The reason is usually very simple and it could be because of market competition or just because of greediness. Some of them use an Agile or other type of coaches. Referring to that type of service, I strongly DO NOT recommend using it. In my opinion, to be able to optimize something you should not only know the general characteristics of the business but actually you must know the particular Company work, as well as their company life in details. The trainers teach you about optimizing and of course their lectures are general and optimized but not specific to you.
What I want to say is that many of the business owners have absolutely wrong idea what it actually means to optimize the work process as the only thing they emphasize is their staff to do more tasks as fast as possible. The result is increasing the stress and decreasing the quality, as you know very well, good, cheap and fast just do not combine.
For us, there is a minimum time for doing something and it should not be ever done faster! Why?
When you are in a rush, you can miss and misunderstand something or wrongly to interpret the collected data. Making an assumption and taking a decision based on a wrong information will lead to undesired results. The mistake could be discovered very far in the future and will cost you much more trying to fix the already made damage than the initially needed time for doing the job properly.
Our approach is little bit in the opposite of the agile direction. We prefer to be more plan driven…
For example, when we have a task, the very first thing we do is to investigate and size it. To be able to size it properly we need all the requirements to be clear and specific. We do not start until we do not have that. The sizing is always about dividing in smaller pieces and an estimation…
The estimation could be based on a previous experience or calculating the time of the small steps that should be performed for accomplishing the result.
The sizing document includes: the time dedicated to the sizing itself, the time for research, the actual work, the time for testing and the time for the reports. If it is possible the sizing always should be done by the person that will do the job or at least consulting with them.
After signing an agreement, we start working according to the plan and keep daily log of all the work performed.
Why we keep such Daily Log? The reasons are two: it helps us for making the report and the most important is, we to be able to track what are the reasons for the progress or the regress of the SEO performance.
Here you can read about our Daily Work Log.
When the process is structured and previously planned, it is easier for the client to follow what and how we do in order to achieve the reported results.