This article summarizes research that a group did into Web application design practices. Web application design teams that have a shared understanding of a project’s context and objectives produce better results.
We did not find any correlation with user satisfaction and those teams with the most specialized team members, one way or the other: some teams with the most specialization did well, and some teams did poorly. What we did consistently observe among teams that had high user satisfaction scores, was one characteristic that stood out above all the others—what we began to call shared, holistic understanding. Those teams that achieved the highest degree of shared, holistic understanding consistently designed the best web applications. The more each team member understood the business goals, the user needs, and the capabilities and limitations of the IT environment—a holistic view—the more successful the project. In contrast, the more each team member was “siloed” into knowing just their piece of the whole, the less successful the project.
Their 5 keys to promoting shared, holistic understanding of a project:
- All team members—all—conduct at least some user research
- Team members participate in work and task flow workshops
- Team members share and discuss information as a team
- Team members prioritize information as a team
- Team members design together in collaborative workshops
Read the full article: Bringing Holistic Awareness to Your Design
I agree with much of what is written in this article. Building a shared understanding of the business goals for a Web application or a Web site helps all of the people involved in the process know how to make the right decisions when they come up.
That’s why we generally are pushing more to have the team staffing a project involved upfront during the Discovery phase of our projects. This is time-consuming, as the author states, but ultimately promotes project success.
Also, some of the practices (discussing information as a team, prioritizing information as a team) match well with the Scrum-style process that we follow with many of our Web development projects. Daily stand-up meetings and collaborative sprint planning keeps everybody on the same page.
This also is further supporting evidence for our primary model of local (versus cross-country or cross-continent) software development. Collaborating in face-to-face meetings and the free flow of information that results is so crucial to successful projects.