Matthew Lang avatar

Matthew Lang

Family guy and web developer

I'm coming to the end of a project with a client. In the past I would have made sure the client was happy, closed the project off and collected the rest of my fee for the work. So would many freelancers. The work is done, you're done. Right? Maybe not.

Over the last few months a number of projects have been started and finished with the same client. This has led to a familiarity that is great for day to day communication, but as a working team we have become complacent in the work we are doing and there is clearly room for improvement in how we work together to finish each project.

In an agile team, frequent retrospectives are used to find out what's working for the team, what isn't and areas where the team can improve. It's a time of reflection. As part of a my pledge to deliver a professional service, I'm am now going to give a retrospective for each project that I finish with a client.

Essentially it's a report of three areas. Developers will recognize the questions as they are the same questions asked when an agile team gets together for their own retrospective. So why not apply the same idea to client work as well?

1. Where did we go wrong?

Admitting where a project went wrong can be difficult for all concerned. It's not a finger-pointing exercise though. If you think I'm picking at your faults, then you're probably not the type of client I want to work with. We're simply trying to isolate the problems areas so that we can change them for the better.

2. Where did we do well?

Highlighting where a project went well is important for any future work I do with a client. This is often over looked and we should never just think the work that is done on time and within budget is okay. If work is carried out within these constraints, then recognising that success is a great area to start for future projects. I want to build on a set of good practices that we both recognise so that future projects become easier to do.

3. Where could we improve?

We found out where we went wrong from the first question, but is there something we can do to fix this for future projects? If we are to continue working together, then it would benefit everyone if we could gradually improve on projects in the past. Less bumps on the road means projects can be finished to a higher quality, on schedule and with-in our agreed budget. Who doesn't want to work like that?

I have a first retrospective coming up in the next couple of weeks, and I've already collected a number of different observations from the project where both myself and the client could improve. Not all clients will be happy to read the retrospective or even take any advice from it. That's okay, it's their choice. For those clients that want to improve on future projects when working with me, I'll be more than happy to help them resolve problems from the retrospective and suggest recommendations for future projects with them.

The project doesn't end with the last commit or deploy, it ends when I've exceeded the expectations of the client and helped them get the most from our time together working on a project.

The Marketing Alternative to Social Networks

Marketing your product online has one bad rule. It's not a rule so much as a practice. Whether it's good or bad, I'll leave down to you to decide. Here it is.

In order to market your product effectively online, you at least need a presence on each of the major social networks.

I'm talking social network accounts here. Google+, Facebook and Twitter. Without a doubt the most popular networks out there, and if you want to market your product you need an account for each of these networks so that you have an outlet for your product. I'm aware that you don't need to be sitting on these accounts on a daily basis to monitor it, but it does require some maintenance. And that's my problem. Why do you need to have an account in these networks just to market your goods? Is there an alternative?

There is and it's probably been staring you in the face since you sat down at your desk this morning with your coffee.

It's email.

Long forgotten as the first popular form of sharing content, email has been increasingly replaced by social network forms of communications. It is one of the last remaining forms of open communication that just works. You can send a message to anyone providing you know their email address. It doesn't matter which email service you use, which client you use or even if it's self-hosted. Email just works and it cuts across the borders of social networks easily. Straight to the people that matter. The people who buy and could potentially buy your product.

You might be able to reach more people by managing a separate account on each network, but do you have time for that? I sure as hell don't.

Lately I've seen a resurgence in the use of email by others to market their products and services. Newsletters are an increasingly great way to market your product to others. Letting people know of changes and offers in your product keeps your customers up to date. A call to action at the end of the email is also a great way to encourage potential customers to check out your product or even buy your product.

The best thing about it though is that it's already there.
Waiting to be used. Marketing your product starts with an email to the right person. Sometimes that's all that's needed to start selling your product.

For the last couple of days I've been trying to resolve a bug in an application I'm writing for a client. As I was testing and re-writing the component a first time, a thought jumped into my head, "I' shouldn't be doing it this way. It feels wrong".

A second re-write later to the component backed by tests and my conclusions were correct, I was doing it wrong. It's hard to explain if you're not a developer, so I won't go into the details, but it boils down to best practices. I initially implemented this component one way when I should have implemented it another way. It's taken me a bit longer to get there, but get there I did.

Should I be hard on myself at the fact that I didn't think of this initially? I don't think so. It's easy to be pointed in the right direction when you're part of a team with a shared pool of knowledge. When you're working on your own, you can't be always switched on to the best practices for everything that you do. Practice it enough though and it will stick eventually.

Remembering the Start Page

Remember having a start page? I do.

Everytime I would open my browser, I would be faced with a billboard of widgets that funnelled in data from different sources and displayed them all on the one screen. It was beautiful. Before RSS readers took off, the start page was the go to place for all your news.

I remember my first start page, the Google Personalised Homepage. It was great. All my important feeds on the one screen. Everything I wanted to read for the day in one place. Gradually this evolved over time into iGoogle and with it came changeable backgrounds, widgets created by Google and thousands of widgets created by others. It went to a tabbed page so that you could setup multiple tabs on your homepage. Now you could categorise widgets and cram more data into your home page and you wouldn't need to scroll down to view those widgets, you just clicked on a different part of the screen (yes, I'm failing to see the convenience in this too).

Along came time based backgrounds. These were backgrounds that would change over the course of the day. Now you didn't need to see the same thing in your background all through the day, it would change as the day went on. You could only see this if the you didn't have a screen crammed full of widgets.

I even tried Netvibes for a brief spell and while it as fun to try something different, I went back to using iGoogle after not using it for a week. It was just too familiar and easy to use. Also I had invested time in getting the start page setup exactly as I wanted it.

All good things come to an end though and sadly last year, Google pulled the plug on iGoogle. Online trends have moved on from start pages. Most people now open social media clients as their first port of call for the day or maybe they go straight to their favourite news site to catch up. Only the insane try and start the day by opening their inbox.

Only a few services remain now that offer the start page experience, but I don't see the benefit in using them now. There's too much data out there for me to consume, certainly too much to fit on iGoogle regardless of how many tabs you have on the page.

Feedbin is my new start page now with a greater focus on curated content rather than just letting any old thing in. It has multiple feeds in it like my start page had, but it's better at letting me choose what I want to read and that's more important now.

Switching to Annual Subscriptions

Yesterday I got a hold of my credit card statement. This is the statement for the credit card that I use for my freelance business. Web services, hosting, e-books and subscriptions all go on it. It's not wildy extravagant. Last month I spent just under £100 on products and services for my freelance business. I can definitely cut back on a couple of services I subscribe to and choose lower pricing plans, but there's another area where I can make savings.

Each month I pay a small amount to subscribe to a number of different services. For most of these services I'm happy to pay the monthly amount. It's always under £10 with the exception of one. Not a lot of money, but over the course of the year those add up.

Where I'm not saving money is paying the monthly subscription amount for these services rather than the annual amount. Most online products and services offer an annual discount that means you pay less for that service over the year. You do however have to pay for the annual service up front.

As I'm trying to keep a reign on my spending, I would love to switch to paying a once annual amount for these services, but with there being a handful that I can do this with, I'd rather not do it all in the one month. It would just cost too much money in the one month.

The alternative then is to stagger annual service subscriptions. Starting in April, I'm going to switch one service a month over to an annual subscription in order to save a bit more money. I'm already using these services on a monthly basis and have done for the last two years. I'm a regular payer and will continue to do so, so why not subscribe for a year and save myself some more money?

Making annual payments for products and services will increase my monthly spending for my business at first, but over the rest of the year, I'll see my monthly spending do down. There's a couple of trade-offs with this plan.

The first is that I'll be tied into that service for a longer period of time, but it's a trade-off I can live with. I've used the services I'm committing to for a few years now and I don't see me wanting to change in the next year at least.

The second is that my monthly spending projection will be hard to track given that some months will have larger one off payments. It's not a major inconvenience but I have been so used to maintaining a monthly amount that has been consistent for the last year.

Switching to annual plans for services is a difficult choice. I suggest that you only consider those services that are critical to your business and also offer a discount over paying monthly. You might only save yourself a small amount on one service, but across a handful of services you could be saving yourself a lot more. Definitely something worth thinking about.