What are the common challenges that creative agencies face when trying to deliver tech projects?

1. Lack of technical expertise

Creative agencies have incredible expertise in design and branding, but building and retaining an experienced development team is difficult and expensive. There are far too few developers out there, and even less experienced technical leaders. The other side of this is there are lots of really interesting and highly paid positions trying to lure your precious developers away. So, more often than not a creative agency will have a small, often inexperienced, development team that will likely see a lot of churn - leading to knowledge loss within the agency and the hard slog to recruit more devs. Where does this leave us, with limited resources and expertise to take a set of project requirements and turn them into an accurate estimate, and a lack of experience to know how to keep a project on track when things start to go wrong. Ultimately, this can lead to a bad experience for the client and a stressful work environment for the agency.

2. Communication issues

Poor communication between creative and technical teams can lead to misunderstandings, delays, and cost overruns. Effective communication is essential to ensure that project requirements are understood, and everyone is working towards the same goal. This sort of leads on from point 1, in many cases effective communication comes from experience. In this instance 'communication' isn't whether the creative and development team have a good relationship and get on down the pub on a Friday (although this can help), this is more about breaking down the complexities of both disciplines and explaining them in simple terms for each to understand. In our experience it's also making sure that everyone has the full picture, whether that's the latest set of UI designs or a full breakdown of all the intricate site animations that have been demoed to the client, but might not be clear in the static UI designs.

3. Scope creep

Changes in project requirements, or 'scope', can result in delays and cost overruns. Managing scope creep is essential to keep projects on track and within budget. An experienced technical leader or project manager will spot scope creep a mile off and immediately raise it as an issue or push back to minimise the impact. A less experienced team member might just accept the changes, or not have the confidence to push back on the client or more senior team members. Have a change management process - understand what is an out of scope request, communicate costs and time impact and crucially seek approval of any changes requested.

4. Keeping up with technology trends

The technology landscape is constantly evolving, and keeping up with the latest trends can be challenging. Creative agencies need to stay abreast of the latest technologies to ensure that their products and services are competitive, and meet client needs, without adopting every new shiny technology before it's actually production ready or well supported.

5. Balancing creativity with technical constraints

Creative agencies should look to balance their creative vision with technical constraints. This can be challenging when designing websites and apps, where technical limitations (or budget constraints) can restrict creative freedom. Finding the right balance is essential to create products that are both functional and beautiful. A modular design system utilising reusable elements can shave a lot of time off build. Involve the development team in the design process, get them to estimate against initial designs before the client demo - don't get the client excited about all the bells and whistles without knowing the impact on development and costs.

What are the solutions?

Ok, so we've covered the challenges now, what about those solutions. What can we do to help projects run more smoothly?

1. Lack of technical expertise

Do everything possible to retain technical expertise in the team (how? Interesting challenges, good support from experienced technical leadership, project processes that reduce surprises and correlated stress / pressure, career roadmap, and yes, regular salary reviews...alternatively you can outsource this problem and create a long term partnership with a specialist development agency that already has a highly experienced team).

2. Communication issues

1. Involve the development team early and often. Work collaboratively throughout the discovery and design phases so everyone is clear on the requirements and the implications on development.  

2. Run education sessions (between design, PM and dev teams) "how can we work better together". Implement change that focuses on good communication (consider an agile project process see 3.)

3. Scope creep

Consider implementing an agile project workflow that encourages ongoing communication between the teams, defines core project deliverables and tracks progress against these whilst focusing on delivering optimum value to the client. (this is a good article that gives an overview of the different approaches https://www.teamwork.com/blog/website-project-management/). 

1. Adopt processes that involve multiple steps of requirements and design review and estimation by the developers

2. Don't be afraid to say no to clients, instead educate them on the implications - additional functionality or late changes to requirements have an impact on cost

3. Implement a strict change management process

4. Keeping up with technology trends

Ringfence R&D time for the development team - allow them to 'play' around with new technologies and investigate how they could benefit clients. Don't 'test' new technologies on client projects without understanding the best use cases and potential pitfalls beforehand.

5. Balancing creativity with technical constraints

Communication is key! Design for efficiency and reusability. Modularity and consistency is king - more of this means less complexity and variety which in turn reduces time in development and cost.

Don't have the experienced technical expertise in-house then consider partnering with a dev agency that has experience working with creative agencies. Experience and good communication are key to making this successful - a good development agency should augment your in-house team and help to streamline a project, not add more complexity to it. Find a team that can cut to the core of the requirements, implement processes where they're needed and help you push back when necessary.

You may have noticed a common thread shared by almost all of these challenges. In almost every case the core factor is communication (whether good or bad). Communication can make or break a project. Get that right and everything else will fall into place.

Need a technical partner that can help you navigate these challenges and deliver web projects better? Get in touch via our contact page here to find out how we can help.