@media: Designers Vs Developers
Another successful @media conference comes to a close and as usual interesting things were said and hopefully everyone learned something. As usual I have a few more things on my must find time to play with list. More on those if they happen.
But one part of the conference I felt needed addressing straight away was the first days panel. The Hot Topics panels bring together a few of the days speakers to answer questions posed by the audience. This year each day had it’s own panel discussion, with the first days session having a design theme. So far so good, and before I getting going I have to say I think Jeffrey Veen did a sterling job of prodding and prompting the session along. The rest of the panel composed of Andy Clarke, Dan Rubin, Bronwyn Jones and Indi Young.
The panel fielded a few interesting questions (and The Beatles in-joke was highly entertaining) but the whole thing took an odd turn part way through – odd in the sense that everything suddenly became very anti-developer.
Andy Clarke seemed to be the ring leader here saying things like (I’m paraphrasing here) “I hate daily stand-ups, we should do Agile”. Dan Rubin was involved too, seemingly saying all developers prefer the rigid nine to five because they’re logical people, while designers want to be able to work whenever they choose. This and other comments caused a few good friends and web developers on the front row to literally shake their fists in anger. The audience got involved too, cheering the anti-developer or anti-engineer statements on. In my mind damage had just been done to out our industry.
Buidling web sites or applications is a pretty multidisciplinary exercise, and in any team environment good communication is often the difference between executing well and failing badly. Conferences like @media are a great place to come together with people from different disciplines and similar jobs in different organisations and share stories. I’m not saying either Dan or Andy haven’t had bad experiences with developers or stand-ups. I’m not saying bad individuals or bad process don’t exist (I have scars from both). I’m saying that generalising these experiences and then promoting them to impressionable designers is dangerous.
I have the good fortune of working with a great designer, Alex Lee, at GCap at the moment. He’s involved in our stand-up meetings every morning and without him there we would waste untold amounts of time and effort. If he turned up on monday and said “I’m not going to come to stand-ups anymore, Andy Clarke says they aren’t cool”. We have a massive problem. My fear is this is exactly what’s going to happen somewhere tomorrow.
I’m something of a hybrid; I’ve run the whole gamut of design and development activities during my career to-date (I’ve even touched on project management) and have worked in small and medium sized agencies, as an independent freelancer and now in a decent sized in-house team. All of these roles pose different communication challenges which require different solutions. What works for three people in a distributed team doesn’t work for fifteen people working in-house. Some types and sizes of team work best with stand-ups, others work best being in the same small room together. Sometimes you need a centralised audit trail of everything that has happened on a project, other times it’s overkill. Somethings everyone has to be working on the project at the same time, at other times as long as tasks get done it really doesn’t matter.
I’m not saying I like all of those working conditions – I’m saying that if you understand where they work best you can work in the environment that suits you. Andy Clarke runs a boutique agency doing high quality work, working with a very small team where individual flexibility and minimal process is definitely the best approach. I now work in a cross disciplinary team of maybe sixty people and it’s a different ball game completely.
This isn’t an attack on Andy, or Dan, or even an anti-designer rant. The web is a young industry filled with young people. We’re learning as we go and stealing what we can from other disciplines. Also not that many of us really like the idea of project management, never mind the reality. Agile methods like Scrumm are hot at the moment but that’s not to say we won’t find something that better suites our discipline in the future. Iterative development, while often annoying to designers, appears to be producing better results. If designers, and developers, want to change how we work together for the better, then get interested in project management and lets have a discussion in public. If you want to complain about individual experiences then that’s why you have a blog.
Comments
Spot on.
Taking only one viewpoint of how to build websites and run successful agencies is always a dangerous thing. From a design perspective it may well be true that designers work best in their own time scale – but you can’t run a business consisting of more than a couple of people on that philosophy. And it may be true that developers prefer routine, but you can’t expect to get the best out of your designers if you keep everyone to that expectation. And it may be true that each produce their best work (or at least are happiest) when unhindered by the needs of their counterpart – but you can’t build a good site or agency by keeping people in their own niche and not talking with or compromising with everyone else.
What works best are specialists (designers, developers) who also understand their ‘counterpart’. Designers that understand development issues, developers that understand designers issues. Management that can bring working conditions together for both. Any agency consisting of more than a couple of people has to have specialists that can appreciate the issues of their counterparts and communicate well with them. Or else efficiency suffers, creativity suffers, and morale suffers. It is not enough to be specialist. You must also have an understanding of the rest of the web and your team’s jobs. Design does not exist independently, we must design with a programmer. Applications are not independent of design, you must program with a designer.
I’m pretty tired of hearing specialists preach about general working practices and/or technology as though theirs is the only way. It’s like all the bitchiness about PHP and Rails. It doesn’t matter which you use, as long as you use them right. Neither is intrinsically better than the other (not to mention they are technically incomparable anyway, one’s a language the others a framework). Likewise, one way of working is not any better than another. The important thing in both is to assess the requirements of the issue and people in front of you and act accordingly. Not to pick one approach and use that exclusively in every instance.
Matt Wilcox - 1st June 2008
Listen, I don’t even know what “standups†are (maybe some kind of 37Signals aberration), and I really doubt that a couple of people’s remarks at a single conference will damage “out†industry. If that were all it took, I would have destroyed “out“ industry many times over.
Joe Clark - 1st June 2008
@Matt I don’t think Andy disagrees that we should work together, just that some of the things he said erked me when it comes to the larger teams that many of us work on.
@Joe Fair enough, I’m often a little flowery! Stand-ups are generally quick daily meetings popular in Agile processes which aim to make sure everyone knows what is going on.
gareth - 1st June 2008
If Joe Clark doesn’t know what stand-ups are, then I am “definitely” doing them :)
Sarat Pediredla - 1st June 2008
That panel was a bit odd to be honest. I get the feeling that Andy Clarke enjoys making outlandish statements and knows that he will put noses out of joint. There are also huge differences between working in large teams (when solid structure is more important as you have a whole bunch of people to co-ordinate) and working alone or with a couple of other people where you can work with people’s own rhythms.
Andy made similar throwaway comments about wanting to pick up the phone every time he needed to speak to someone, which again shows a lack of empathy with the needs of the other side. As a developer I like using email, Basecamp and other tools that mean that I’m not disturbed and forced into a context switch every time someone wants to ask a question. I don’t mind getting back to someone on the phone if that is helpful to their way of working, but if I’m dragged away from my code every time they have ‘just a quick question’ then nothing gets coded. As a company we do web development for design agencies, and so we work with designers all the time and most of the time very successfully. We do this by having a bit of give and take on both sides, and learning that there isn’t a “right” way that works every time.
Rachel Andrew - 1st June 2008
I gave up listening to what people thought was the best practice for development LONG ago and decided to just knuckle down and do my job.
Steve Woods - 1st June 2008
Alex, as good as he may be, is ultimately a professional, which in layman’s terms means he’s most likely completely unaffected by remarks made by Andy Clarke, since said remark-marker is in no position to know other people’s jobs or position. True professionals will ultimately evaluate other opinions and apply them as necessary—if people are genuinely shocked or thrown by Andy’s comments they should re-evaluate their claimed position as professionals.
Bradley Wright - 1st June 2008
Yeah, Andy got me slightly riled with some of his comments too. A little condescending to mock practices that have grown out of years of software development experience and that are proved to be extremely effective when used in the right scenarios.
Almost nothing is as black and white as some like to state, and to think that it is demonstrates a limited scope of experience.
Andy Hume - 1st June 2008
@Brad It’s the young impressionable I’m more worried about. The designers reasonably fresh out of design courses at university just starting out in our industry.
gareth - 2nd June 2008
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Morethanseven > Where are the Rock Star Web Project Managers? - 2nd June 2008
@Andy Hume: “A little condescending to mock practices that have grown out of years of software development experience and that are proved to be extremely effective when used in the right scenarios.”
You’re 100% right mate. The point I was making is that (in my experience) people apply those principles rigidly without either finding out if the scenario IS right or because it’s all they know.
@Bradley Wright: “Since said remark-marker is in no position to know other people’s jobs or position”
Which is why I always speak from personal experience and a personal perspective. It’s like Marmite, you either love or hate what I say.
@Rachel Andrew: “I get the feeling that Andy Clarke enjoys making outlandish statements and knows that he will put noses out of joint.”
Yup, and sometimes they make people reevaluate how stuff gets done. That and the fact that I just crave the limelight ;)
@Matt Wilcox: “What works best are specialists (designers, developers) who also understand their ‘counterpart’.”
Which was the entire message in my answer to that question on the @media panel. Oh, and I hope the new job is suiting you. I think you’ll do a whole lot better being in a more ‘creative’ environment ;)
@Gareth: ”...the whole thing took an odd turn part way through – odd in the sense that everything suddenly became very anti-developer”
I didn’t feel or intend that. My gripe (as always) was about what I think are old fashioned processes (with which a huge show of audience hands agreed). It was not about being anti-developer. I agree 100% with you on the need for structure, process and for finding better ways of working for everybody, designers and developers. And maybe stand-up meetings work in some organisations. As I’ve said and written many times before, my experience of them was a bad one, but as you point out, that might have been down to “bad individuals” .
” Andy Clarke runs a boutique agency doing high quality work, working with a very small team where individual flexibility and minimal process is definitely the best approach.”
Oh you’re wrong there mate! I work them like dogs! Dogs I tell you! :D
Malarkey - 2nd June 2008
@Malarkey Thanks for the comments. The anti-developer feeling was more an audience thing I think, a change in the mood of the mob if you will. I appreciate you will always talk from personal experiences, and much prefer that over someone who slavishly starts with it depends, but I would have liked someone on the panel who could have had an argument with you on the subject. That would have made it clearer that different processes work in different circumstances.
I don’t mind people being forced into reevaluating things, as long as that’s what people are knowingly doing – and it’s not just that people are anarchists at heart and enjoy the chaos.
gareth - 3rd June 2008
@Malarkey That makes sense then; all I’ve heard is things out of context but we seem to be on the same page. I’m really liking it at View thanks, they are a nice bunch of people and there’s certainly a lot of interesting creative output going on.
Matt Wilcox - 5th June 2008
@gareth I totally agree with you. However, I think that “Iterative development” only works when done properly. There is a big difference between improving, polishing and growing a site, appose to changing the same elements over and over for very little value.
Phillip - 17th June 2008
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