Project Management and running a web development team are not easy tasks, but that's what I do best. I juggle the requirements of the team, customers that hire the team, outside vendors, and the site requirements to get the project done on time and on budget with a great deliverable. It's not an easy job satisfying everyone, so compromises are inevitable.

I use my background of being a computer techy, knowledge of your business, business management and consulting theory, throw in some asian cultural experience, and a little bit of luck, to come out on top of the mess. And stay alive.

Finding the Right Solution for the Right Problem
Is the problem worth solving? Do you have a tangible/intangible payback that will justify the cost? Can technology solve this problem or is there another solution? I can help you answer these and more questions.

Business Analysis to Technical Solution
Someone's got to talk to your business users in terms that they can understand. I'll interview them, write down my interpretation of their requirements, and then present them back to the business people. That way you're more guarenteed to have business requirements that the business people really need.

Once the business requirements are agreed to, they are handed over to the technical team for scoping of a technical solution and an assessment of cost. Your technical group actively takes part in this phase, because if you don't get them involved, in the end they'll let you hang out to dry.

Educating your Customers
Let's admit it. Computers are not easy to understand. Most technogeeks talk a completely different language to regular folk. I can take a complex computer problem or theory and explain it so that everyone, young and old, can understand.

Internet/Intranet Usability
While you could hire a high school student to code a web site, how usable is your site? Will people browsing the site immediately know where to go, or will they need to hunt and peck, get lost and frustrated before they find what they want? Often times they'll give up and go somewhere else, like your competitor. The more time they spend hunting for what they want, the more it costs your company in lost productivity.

Usability testing is not expensive yet can make a world of difference in correcting site design flaws that annoy your customers the most. If you budget some of your project costs to usability testing your payback will come from customers that will shop on your site or by more efficient use of your site by employees. Either way, it's worth the cost.

I will also make recommendations to ensure that your site is available to the blind and deaf browsers with compliance to W3C accessibility standards. The ability to render to the lowest possible browser allows your site a to be viewed by a wider audience.

Web Site Efficiency Audit
Every page of a web site can be coded efficiently or crudely. A web page that has unncessarily large graphics and sloppy HTML code will be very slow to load, all for no reason. While your broadband customers may not get too upset, those on dialup will be forced to wait. If they are forced to wait for longer than 10 seconds, they might decide to go somewhere else. If you're on an intranet you get a double penalty: you lose efficiency of your employee as well as pay for unnecessary network bandwidth, all for no benefit.

I believe that team selection is vitally important. From the day you start recruiting for the team not only should each team member have good technical skill, they should be able to get along with each others. Technically qualified members that do not get along should be split into different teams. The difficulty is how do you know who will get along with whom? An interview is a one-on-one or many-on-one meeting, usually with no other team members present. It's not so easy to find out who can get along with whom.

Team Dynamics
All things considered, on a project it's the technical issues that seem to be easily fixed. These issues are black and white, and a solution works or it does not. Here are some suggestions to work out the people issues:

• Honesty: Without honesty, office politics rears its ugly side, throwing up walls that impede the free flow of communications and drive everyone crazy. Project costs escalate as everyone takes sides and positions.
• Team First: A team that does not get along will deliver your project on time with difficulty, if at all. Every team member has his or her personality and wants to be treated a little differently. Technology people have an insatiable appetite to grow their knowledge. Yet while helping all team members as individuals, the project must proceed on schedule and get delivered on time, on budget and with high quality. We can all sacrifice a little of "me" and contribute a little or "us".
• Simplicity: There will always be many ways to do something, some ways more complex than others. While the complex ways may have added advantages and be quite clever, the more complex it is the more prone to breakdown the solution becomes. Simple may be not as clever but is less prone to break. When we leave the project and someone else takes over the maintenance role, they'll appreciate our choice of simple over complex.
• Don't work for free: It sounds strange, and if you told your Mother she'd think it obvious, but so many companies coerce their employees into working for free. Yet employees will claim their time back by slowing down or burning out, both of which reduce productivity of the employee. As well the team member has a risk of low morale, mistrust of management, and may eventually quit. Management then must spend money on the expensive recruitment process.
• Are you Having Fun?: If you're not having fun then something's wrong. Yes, you can work hard even if you hate what you do, but you'll feel bad and your output will not be up to your usual standard. Innovation and creativity do not usually occur to those who really hate their work. Do you agree?
• Balance Work with Personal Time: Balance is the key to not burning out. When you burn out you're no good to anyone and let down those close to you. While you can burn quite bright, you can only sustain your light for a short period of time. You'll need to ask yourself how bright and how long you want to last. Everyone makes a personal decision.

Building a Technical Team
We've all seen teams where all members individually have great credentials and track records, yet put together they seem to fight and not ge along. We scratch our heads and wonder what went wrong and how to correct it.