What Our Website Redesign Taught Us About Teamwork
April 26, 2018 |
Workplace Tips
As you've hopefully seen, TAJ recently launched a new website and let me tell you it's been a long time coming. After countless hours and innumerable meetings, here we are - finally finished.
However, we've been taking some time to look back on the project and the whole team can agree that we learned a ton. After eight long months of work, we experienced our share of ups and downs, but we like to think that team dynamic and teamwork was what helped us to pull through. Regardless, we thought our teamwork takeaways were important enough to share, so without further adieu, here is what our website redesign taught us about teamwork;
1. Communication is Key
Not unlike many work teams today, the group working on our website was geographically dispersed. If you are anything like us, with individual contributors sprinkled throughout the country, it can be difficult to remain on the same page. To combat this, you need stellar communication.
We found throughout this experience that routinely keeping the team updated on project happenings and decisions helps to not only support team morale, but productivity. Via weekly email updates and to-lists, the team was able to maintain an appreciation of each other's roles as well as uphold a collective sense of accountability.
2. Balance is Everything
Just like the design of a good website, you need balance. Whether it is team personalities, strengths, and experiences, balance means finding synergy coming from different perspectives. Embrace it, it helps move forward constructive dialogue and ideas.
3. Foster Creativity - New Ideas are the Lifeblood of Growth
Obviously you need technical personnel to complete a website, but we found that creatives, and the ideas they brought to the table were a huge help to the redesign process. Creatives actively challenged preconceived notions about website design by simply asking "why", thus allowing the rest of the team to truly think through an answer. If the response was something in the vein of "well, that's just how it'd done..." we were able to speak to a particular topic and determine if prior thinking matched our goals and brand messaging.
Looking back, these conversations were incredibly valuable to the end product.
4. Repeat After Me - Prioritization and Delegation
Teamwork is nothing without prioritization and delegation. This project was an eight month effort and it would have been nearly impossibly without a leader's inability to set an agenda.
Though weekly and monthly check ins, our website team was able to gauge and assess our progress. In the taking the time assess previous work, we were able to come back to our initial goals and reprioritize team efforts. With that complete you can assign important tasks to the relevant parties to foster overall efficiency and time management.