The disadvantage of being a project manager without much programming know-how is that you cannot participate in purely techical discussions, so you entirely depend on the kowledge of your programmers. Furthermore, you don’t know all about the technological safety features and mechanisms that help you control and prevent bugs and errors. The advantage is that you are looking at a website purely from a business perspective. After all, a business website is just a tool to deliver a service . The value of a website without customers is zero, so the more you are paying attention to useability and marketability, the more you will get above the zero zone.

Website development is a team effort

Do’s

• Think every feature through from mutliple perspectives; from the profit perspective, the customer perspective, the administrators perspective and, very importantly, the cheaters perspective. If there is a gap in you system, even if it is rather small,  it might suddenly turn into a big haunting hole in your bank account beacause some one will takte advantage of it.

• Tell the programmers that they will be absolutely responsible for future errors and gaps in the system and that they should read through and thoroughly think about every aspect of your system specification before they commit themselves to it. Sure enough they will find a lot of inconsistencies you have missed and will help you to turn your plan into a sustainable and realistic project

• Let all people who are involved in the business read through and approve the system specifications. You should have a section in the specifications were you will put down their names after they have approved of it. That way everybody will be commited to making the project a success because website development is a team effort. All the prime decision makers should be involved. That way you can keep potential whining to a minimum and make sure everybody’s knowledge is used to the best extent.

• After everybody has approved of the system specifications, create a spread sheet where you will list every major step of the plan and let your programmers estimate the time it will take to finish these steps. If they have very different estimates, then there might be a different intepretation of what they think the task encompasses, so you might have to clarify those and adjust the specifications accodingly (make sure to get everyone’s approval for these adjustments).

• Determine the milestones of the project and a realistic deadline and put an additional time of approximately one third of the whole project on top for feature requests and bug fixes.

• Keep everyone motivated by having a good culture of talking openly about mistakes and problems and by celebrating successes, like finishing a milestone in time.

• Try to keep tension and stress away from programmers, instead make sure that they are feeling good. Give them comfortable charis, offer them coffee and buy them extra large monitors. Yes, it can be that simple.

Dont’s

• Don’t determine unrealistic deadlines to put pressure on people, that is so like Web 1.0ish… Good people are self motivated and don’t need pressure. Unrealistic deadlines cause frustrations and will make the good people turn their backs on your project, if not physically then mentally.

• Don’t establish a culture of blaming and shaming because it will destroy the team play. If whenever there is a mistake, you annoy people by complaining on and on about it, you will stress them out and studies have shown that people perform a lot worse under stress. Instead, calmly get to the bottom of what happened and make sure everyone knows how it happend and how similar mistakes can be avoided in the future.

• Don’t hire people who have little experience because you can get them more cheaply. You need at least one very experienced programmer. Inexpensive and inexperienced programmers can actually cost you more in the long run because they are slower and make more mistakes.

• Don’t let people work from home all the time except it is a task that only requires very little team work. Programmers need to sit together so they can sometimes just quickly solve problems that would take hours to solve per e-mail.

• Don’t annoy prorammers with a lot of small stuff while they are trying to get the big stuff done, instead establish an issue tracking  system for additional feature requests and bug fixes. This system should have a means to prioritize tickets and time estimates.

• Large features should never be handled via an issue tracking system. Instead, you should take the effort to create a really detailed set of system requirements.

1. The  “7-38-55″ rule

According to Mehrabian, words account for 7%, tone of voice accounts for 38%, and body language accounts for 55% of human communication. That means 93% of human communication revolves around how you say what you want to say.

2. The “stand like a rock” rule

Some people move around during presentations like there is some invisible demon chasing them. Well, how do you stand like a rock? Just a moment before you start talking, mentally visualize your feet growing roots into the ground, or if you are not a visual person, feel the soles of your feet as they touch the ground. Although that may sound a bit weird to you, in a mere second you will program your brain to keep you literally “down-to-earth.” This will also help you to cope with any nervousness or anxiety. As an aside, using visual and kinesthetic experiences to change your own behavior are powerful and proven Neuro Linguistic Programming techniques.

3. The “conduct your audience like an orchestra” rule

You might be thinking to yourself that this is the most silly presentation rule you’ve ever heard. Admittedly, taken literally it can lead to some dangerous presentation behavior…Well, let’s see what we can learn from this metaphor. A conductor is in absolute control of his movements. His arms and hands move precisely along the rhythm and elegantly induce music and emotion in the orchestra.

• Control your movements: Make slow movements as they will make you look dignified and lend you credibility. Hectic movements and fidgeting will make you lose the connection to your audience. The extent of your movements should depend on how large your audience is. If the audience just consists of two or three people, small hand and finger movements will suffice. With four to nine people you can also use your arms and elbows. With audiences of ten or more people you can use movements starting with your shoulder and upper arms.
• Move your hands in the rhythm of your speech: Words and gestures should mainly be synchronized while the words should be slightly delayed with the gestures. First you point to something and then you explain it.
• Induce emotions: If you keep your arms down and point the palms of your hands towards the ground, you will induce a negative emotion. If you lift your arms toward your chest and make the palms of your hands face the ceiling you will induce a positive emotion. Do not play around with markers or other objects during the presentations because that will drive your audience nuts.

4. The “speak like the President” rule

By now you are probably thinking these rules are getting way out of hand. However, imagine an American president permanently speaking with a loud voice, conveying aggression; or speaking so quietly as if he was insecure; or speaking with a high pitched voice, coming across as tense and anxious; or with a deep voice, sounding like a complacent grandpa. It’s not going to happen.

Voices are only perceived as pleasant when they vary in accordance with the words. The more voice tone nuances you have at your disposal, the more impressed your audience will be. Create a little suspense by occasionally speaking more quietly. Use a soft fatherly or motherly voice when giving advice. Use a friendly voice tone when talking about an admired expert, or make your words roll out of your mouth with laughter to create a humorous atmosphere…

Use pauses to give your speech a natural rhythm and substitute your “um’s” with pauses because they more elegantly disguise your lack of words.  Never talk down to people. Speak with people as if you were sitting in the audience, enjoying your own speech.

5. The “look everyone in the eye at least once” rule

I once had an amazing professor who managed to look everyone in the eye at least once during a lecture and there were about fifty people in the room. You just got the feeling that each and everyone in the room was important to him. And I don’t need to tell you that every audience wants to feel special. When you are talking to a large audience, use a W-type movement in terms of eye contact, to capture everybody in the audience. Don’t jump around with your eyes too much, move along at a slow pace.

6. The “the face is the mirror of your soul” rule

Believe me, you show the audience that you have a wonderful soul if you smile a lot. Not that fake politician’s smile, no, the warm sympathetic one that comes directly from your heart. Change your facial expressions gently and avoid grimaces and frowns.

7. The “everything in moderation including moderation” rule

Don’t exaggerate anything, make your words sound smooth and your movements look natural but don’t overdo it because if you come across as too perfect, nobody will trust you. The best way to deliver a presentation is to appear both relaxed and enthusiastic. A low-key enthusiasm will do, if you are presenting in a conservative setting. You need to sound like you are telling your audience something really important, because if you do not believe in your message nobody else will. At the same time, remember to take your message seriously but not yourself. For example, make a little humourous self-depreciating remark and the audience will love you.

8. The “practice makes perfect” rule

Start practicing your presentation skills. Tape record yourself or better, get a video of your speech and examine it thoroughly while being absolutely honest with yourself. And always ask your closest friends for feedback after a presentation.

Incremental innovation is the improvement in component performance that build upon the established technological concept; or the refinements in systems design that involve no significant changes in the technical relationships among components.

Radical innovations, on the other hand, involve both a new architecture and a new fundamental technological approach at the component level (Jerald Hage and Marius Meeus)

Strong proponents of radical innovation have denounced the significance of incremental innovation arguing that only radical innovations have a positive impact on business performance. Indeed, it has has become quite fashionable among researchers in the field of innovation  management to undertake enourmous efforts in order to make sure their samples exclusively contain radical innovations. Scholars from the “radical school”  argue that mediocre companies are focusing on the opinions of mainstream customers, are consequently pursuing incremental innovations and are therefore losing their competitiveness. Among these scholars Christensen and Bower have had the most important impact on the scientific consesus in this area.

As Slater and Narver rightfully pointed out, however, the above argument is at danger of mixing up the term “market orientation” with “customer leadership.” When market orientation is taken to the extreme, a company will only focus on the short term responding to customer’s expressed wants with only tiny innovations. On the other hand, market orientation in its modest form, represents a long-term commitment to understanding customer needs—both expressed and latent—and to developing both radical and incremental innovative solutions that produce superior customer value.  Thus, Slater and Narver effectively explain that the original premise of the “radical school”, namely that taking into account the needs of average customers is having a harmful effect on innovation, is based on a misunderstanding. Yet, this fallacious premise does not explain why radical innovations are just as important as incremental innovations.

Verspagen argues that the strong distinction between radical and incremental innovations obscures the fact that the size distribution of innovations is not a dichotomy but instead covers a continuous range of innovation sizes. In reality there is an important interaction and interdependence between radical and incremental innovations. For example, the first workable steam engine was very large and had a limited applicability as well as efficiency. It took more than fifty years for the next step to be taken, i.e. James Watt’s engine with a separate condenser. If we can characterize the impact of some innovations as “radical,” it is only because of a continuous stream of incremental innovations following the introduction of a basic new design (Verspagen). Consequently, when you take a hollistic look at the phenomena of innovation you realize that the cumulative impact of incremental innovations is just as great (if not greater) as that of radical innovations (Lundvall).

Granted, radical innovations are very important and can lead to an improved business performance. However, on a factual level one cannot draw a clear distinction between radical and incremental innovations as they go hand in hand and even cross-fertilize each other. Discrediting the importance of incremental innovation is like discrediting the importance of the drone in a swarm of honey bees. While the drone might not be as productive as the worker bee, without the drone there would be no swarm (and without the swarm there would be no honey).

Sources:

Christensen, C. and J. Bower . “Customer power, strategic investment, and the failure of leading firms”, Strategic Management Journal, 17(3), 1996

Hage, Jerald and Meeus, Ed. Marius,Innovation Science, and Institutional Change, Part 2, Product and Process Innovation, Edquist, Charles and Meeus, Marius, Oxford University Press, New York, 2006

Lundvall, B.A. (ed.) National Systems of Innovation: Towards a Theory of Innovation and Interactive Learning, London: Pinter, 1992

Slater, S.F. and Narver, J.C. . Customer-led and market-oriented: let’s not confuse the two. Strategic Management Journal, 19, 1998

Verspagen, Bart in The Oxford Handbook of Innovation Edited by Jan Fagerberg, David C. Mowery, and Richard R. Nelson, Oxford University Press, 1996

Why not package all the important information into one website and tell people how they can get a hold of you? That way you minimize the search effort of the people who are looking for you and you can show them what you have to offer. A solid web presence will help you to get in touch with the right people and will help the right people to get in touch with you. After all, in life and in business, relationships are all there is. Let’s face it, even in the universe everything only exists because of its relationship to everything else.

With your personal website you can add to your network value, by connecting to more people and building bigger relationships. You can tailor your own web presence to your career goals and your personal style. Further more, you will make it a lot easier for people to relate to you and to find out about what they have in common with you. Next time you meet them in person there is so much more you can talk about.