I have come to develop a great appreciation for the word “no” in this business. There are a couple reasons; the first and most apparent to me is due to the fact that of the three developers whom I took over for, none of them knew how to use it. This is demonstrated time & again in the legacy applications that I’ve inherited, in all the unfinished, grandiose project detritus all around – a lot of these fall in the “infinite amount of monkeys/computers/time” category, like “wouldn’t it be great if only?” (Yeah, well, if only.)

But the intangible results of my predecessors’ penchant for doing everything they were asked has more insidious side-effects (besides the telephone-pole-bulletin-board our public website has become): it has fostered the general understanding that any request will be honored – regardless of scope or ROI, and it has eliminated the perception of a “web champion”. Another resulting after-effect is the inevitable backlash I encounter (along with my boss, and our CIO) when I invoke this simple, two-letter word in response to web requests. I am changing the institution’s perception that the ‘web dept’ is not merely for blind data entry, but a purpose-driven content engine with a focus on the institution’s message, mission and values; and I am not necessarily making lots of friends along the way.

One goal of this perception change is not to stifle the creative ideas of the Internet-savvy dreamers in the institution – I simply want to give their ideas and goals a field to play in, with a dedicated lifeguard/babysitter. Prior to this, the dreamers had to pursue their ideas on their own time, and generally “at the mercy/whimsy of the IT dept” … lots of stalled projects, good ideas with no support, bad ideas with too much time invested and no return, etc – and the overall perception was that everyone was a web developer, and the web developers were just the means to the end, the data entry folks.

So I have been invoking the word “No”. I’m not shutting everyone down or locking the doors, but I’m no longer allowing every hastily-written idea on a cafeteria napkin to qualify itself as a green-lighted web project. These napkins are returned along with a blank “Project Charter” template document, requiring some thoughtful input, project scope & definition, project champions, metric indicators … and fortunately/unfortunately, they don’t always come back. We have a new Web Steering Committee, consisting of some senior management, a couple physicians … they help prioritize and structure ideas, find support for them, and occassionally they deliver the bad news (translated: “no“) for me.

I’ve already noticed a shift in the general perception. The dreamers are beginning to see their ideas in terms of the institution and with respect to other departments, fiscal agendas, our mission and values and most importantly: our patients, physicians and employees. Web project ideas aren’t just the ‘cheap way out’ or a quick fix anymore; web development is no longer seen as Mikey from the Life commercials (“let web development do it; it won’t cost anything/they’ll do anything”). Any web-related agenda is now thoughtfully considered with ROI as a primary objective, and these well defined web projects are becoming quite detailed and extensive – versus one- and two-line, high-level & far-fetched ambiguities.

So strangely, by telling people “no”, now I seem to have more work than ever.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 8th, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under Jake Bunger, Web Design, administrative, content, group collaboration, internal marketing, metrics, project management, webmastering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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