RFP Respons[iveness]

Nothing brings resources together closer than an RFP Response team. Team members are hounded, questioned, examined, challenged, corrected, but most of all praised for a job well done. In the end, a solid RFP Response shows critical thinking and experience in the craft. It's not easy, it's not even always fun, but two-thirds of the way through one of these, I get jazzed and the puzzle seems to fall in place. Quarrels and sleeplessness abound, it is a part time job for most of us, but we need to make the most of our time and impress our customers.

Still learning, but here are some takeaways to share?

• Force engineering and integration teams to work very closely together in the estimation - Siamese would be best :-). Challenge the level of innovation, the complexity of design, and the overall spirit of the completed solution since if these two teams get it wrong, we're doing something w/o a paddle.
• Rely on SME's to assist in the estimation, but don't assume and request the entire org get involved. It's too expensive, and context switching for resources makes it worse. Define an RFP Reponse Team (RRP) and don't alter resources since learning curve is usually very high.
• Just because there's solid RFP details doesn't and shouldn't limit the need for scrutinizing everything - RFP owners expect to answer questions as long as they're posted before the deadline. Put 'em to work!
• Run a tight ship as a PM and consider this a project - a far more critical project than others perhaps since a) you're sucking bandwdith from the org, and b) a painful, incomplete response can lead to dissatsifaction quickly.

Other people's code

A good read from Thomas Lewis from Mix Online.

http://www.visitmix.com/Opinions/Why-Does-Your-Code-or-Design-Suck

I love the drive-by tweet metaphor from the article...it's so true. And not necessarily just from the design side; it's apparent in engineering, too. From a project management side, this can be quite harmful to a project since the shared goals of delivering on time and making a happy customer can bring unneeded chaos for the project and its team members. My way or the highway just can't cut it in all situations. This is especially true if you're bringing on new team mebers into a project. You can't break down the walls and start over - there's simply no funds for this scenario.

As a PM, create positive outcomes for the project by preventing OPC-syndrome by way of a few must-have's;

1. Brief the onboarding team members as to why they've been assigned the project, what are their goals, their mission, and what framework do they need to work within to assure project success. This is not always "perfect" success, but we have to ship software, right, and budget doesn't grow on trees, especially in a consulting org.
2. Bring the correct resources into the project to perform the work. Tasking an Integrator to define a better UX metaphor will only disenchant the creative team - that's their job!
3. A senior developer needs to establish and lay down the application's architecture - don't expect devs to be happy if they're being tasked to super clue fixtures to a solution. On the flipside, we can't afford to overarchitect some fixtures for the sake of ego - ego my Eggo.
4. Critique and feedback is welcome from within, just be sure it's well organized and not flung hapzaxzzardly to the team - the peanut gallery can get ugly. Put a forcing function to funnel feedback through someone so the trivial pieces are diverted from the team. And raraly in a UI/UX driven project is there sufficient time to sit back and iterate and iterate on the deliverable. So, there may be a week left till final delivery when the completed experience is put together. Encourage the team, and take the flaming arrows with your trusty shield. Conversely, don't ignore internal feedback altogether. That's not my suggestion - working peer relationships only strengthen through listening and learning.

Cool Silverlight stuff

This Sobees social networking client ported to Silverlight 3 - don't forget the offline experience avaialble from the context menu. So fast and clean. Nice job, guys.
http://www.sobees.com/

And this beautiful nugget in the banner area front and center is built atop Silverlight 3. Parallax panel to the rescue with smooth streaming media and a slick flip animation sequence.
http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/