When I started on the web content team this year, I was brought into the web content harmonisation project because of my background in large-scale transition projects. I’ve been involved in shifting content between two online learning systems for an international bank and I’ve taken the best practices and systems of a popular gaming website to bring a newer sister site up to the same standard.
I’ve always had a keen interest in making the most of a transition and harmonisation project. My role has usually been to make the process as smooth and efficient as possible, as these projects always have tight timescales. But I also take the opportunity to think about how we can effectively engage with colleagues in the wider business, how we can improve the processes we are shifting, and how we can leave the door open for continuous improvement when the project is complete.
The BCP Council web content harmonisation project is a unique challenge, but I can still see the same opportunities to make our processes simple and effective for everyone involved.
On this blog my colleagues have spoken about our digital engagement group, working together to build the most accessible and useful website that we can. But with a website transition as complex as this one, it’s just as important to engage with our service colleagues to make sure everything on the new website is factually complete and correct.
Part of my role in the project is to make that process as smooth as possible for our service experts, who are uniquely pressed for time and availability with everything that has happened this year. With most of our interactions now taking place on Microsoft Teams, a simple, easily shared process is more important than ever.
The most important part of making that process efficient is to zero in on what we really need from our service contacts. The web content team will be responsible for all of the wording, the content structure, and the formatting – all we really need from our service experts is confirmation that we’ve included everything that needs to be included, and that the information is correct. As we tackle each service section for transition, we engage our service contacts at the start of the process to lay out exactly what we need from them.
Each service is assigned a content lead from the web team that will co-ordinate the process from end to end. The web content team lead collates everything related to the service from across all three preceding sites into a single document, which will both inform the process of building a new content structure for the single site and also serve as a record of everything that came before, in case we need to refer to it. Finally, it gives us early warning of any major issues that we can feed back to the service before their sign off process begins.
Once we have built everything on the new site, we populate a very simple sign off sheet designed to be as clear as possible for our service experts. In the past, project sign-offs have involved lots of back and forth on email and in meetings, resulting in a confusing process and crucially, a confusing record of sign-offs and change requests. Based on my experience moving a lot of content from one set of sites to another, I know the simplest approach is often the best. I investigated pre-packaged form filling apps, such as Google Forms, but the outputs were not simple to collate – and the app did not leave any room for back-and-forth conversations.
Instead, I designed a simple Excel workbook template that each web content lead could easily populate with links to every page they created on the new site. For me, the most useful customisation in Excel for any project management tracker is the conditional formatting tool, so I can change a cell’s appearance depending on input. This allows me to create an easily understandable traffic light system for progress.
In this case, that means each page under review can be marked red if there’s a problem, amber if a change or review is in progress, or green if the page is ready for sign off. A red/green indicator at the top of each sheet will automatically turn green if everything on that sheet is signed off. In this way it’s very easy for both the content lead and the service to quickly scan the workbook and see what actions are left to take.
For each web page under review, there’s also a space for both the content lead and the reviewer to leave comments. The idea here is to make this workbook a comprehensive record of the conversation, rather than losing important steps in email trails and phone calls. The workbook is shared on the cloud using OneDrive so that the conversation can happen in real time.
Once everything in the service section is signed off, our contacts can give us a digital signature on the first tab of the workbook, confirming that everything is ready to go live. At the end of the process, the spreadsheet becomes a single point of reference for continuous improvements and future projects with that service.
We want to make sure the process is as swift and painless as possible for our service experts while maintaining an accurate record of our transition work. We’ll keep reviewing the process as we engage with more services – the advantage of a simple solution is that it’s easily tweaked if the situation changes.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on making a simple and effective sign-off process. Let us know in the comments!
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Digital 