E-Commerce Track Record

Web Management

Running a web delivery department teaches you a lot about all aspects of IT, from the level of representing your department at CIO and business leader level, through individual programme management, people management, requirements analysis, testing, strategy, development methodology, training, coaching, product maintenance, customer satisfaction, and so on.

The skills and experience developed in our successful execution of this responsibility gives us the credentials to slip into any one of the roles above, either in a (interim) managerial context, or for coaching and change management

We have experience running organizational change, off-shoring and web legacy system upgrades

Lessons learnt

• Clarity of Purpose. Send clear, succinct, messages out to senior IT and business, on a regular and predictable basis. Focus on what is changing, and what is under control. Have detailed evidence handy, but don't start with that. Listen to what they say - they are your customers.
• Look after the People. Spend quality, regular time with all members of staff. Make it a habit. Coach senior staff to do the same. Make it an expected area for the appraisal. People are important. Happy workers are more productive.
• Manage with presence. Do not expect to be able to manage by sitting in an office in front of a laptop. The management role is personal, and it is a service (not dictact) for the staff who, like you, are supporting the business. Do it with understanding and humility.

Web Product Upgrades

We have presided over big upgrade programmes for publicly facing financial websites, which had to deal with legacy systems with inadequate documentation and the requirement for the new one "to do the same as the old one".

We approached this by freezing development on the existing webs as soon as possible, allowing only essential maintenance (break-fix etc). Then we delivered the first phase of the new web as soon as possible. Thanks to some clever architecting, it was possible to have the two working together, but it was not ideal. Key to the ability to do this was a very early step in implementing the new authentication infrastructure.

Eventually it was possible to remove the old web (minus some non-changing legacy), and the new system was as complete as it was going to be, until the next upgrade.

Lessons learnt

• Cover yourself with tests. If you are upgrading from an old system, start by writing the tests, and test the old system first. Only then can you be confident about refactoring.
  
• Limit your changes. Replace only that which needs to be replaced first. It is possible to keep some (not frequently used) pieces as is. Upgrade the popular areas of the website first, with high quality. The less used pieces may eventually die off naturally...
• Don't drag your feet. Be very conscious of the time you are taking to go live. Agile helps to focus on delivery. Take too long and you are already out of date, since nothing stays still for long.The great new system may otherwise be an old system, given the pace of web technology. So use agile to deliver small changes often.