Key Points:
Seth Gottlieb wrote an excellent blog post “Flexibility. It’s a matter of perspective.” where he lays out the largely mutually-exclusive meanings of “flexible” to content creators, web designers, print designers, and developers. I would add another key stakeholder: the overall web presence owner who may want branding consistency. Put even more broadly, the website needs to be 1) coherent and 2) able to make site-wide changes.
Inflexibility in two steps, starting with… flexibility
The interesting thing about flexibility is that on the small scale it is trivial. This is one of the biggest problems, since it is tough to argue with stakeholders who are reminding us how easy it is to implement what they are asking for (“I did this on my iPad while we were talking – this is obviously easy!”). So when push comes to shove, especially in the heat of making lots of big changes to a website, we let stakeholders do whatever it takes to implement whatever they think is necessary. For example, we might open up the WYSIWYG editor to allow any HTML, or we might let one group launch a microsite on another platform. In other words, we may start with flexibility. But then later the inflexibility settles in. What happens when we want to change the way all the data tables look across the site? Oops, that’s now hard since it’s implemented in an inconsistent manner. What about when someone wants to change teams in the organization? They now may have to learn different tools. We all know cases where even getting the logo the same across the web presence is difficult.
The flexibility equation
There are two sides to the flexibility equation: 1) immediate flexibility and 2) long-term flexibility. For example, when someone is publishing a page that needs to include a data table with special features, then they want—now—the flexibility to make that happen. This may fly in the face of long-term flexibility when it comes to standardize how data tables work (perhaps also allowing additional features where all data tables have manipulation or download tools).
Streamlining and product management over time
In many ways immediate flexibility and long-term flexibility aren’t as in conflict as they appear, since almost always everyone wants to work faster. In digging deeper, usually there are known common publishing (or site management) needs that should be streamlined. Lots of people complaining about needing to control their left nav item? Instead of just letting people completely control their section’s left nav, perhaps by talking with the stakeholders you realize that really all that is needed is the ability to add one custom link. Of course, the details of your website are unique, but usually if you go a little deeper in investigating issues you can find a lot more commonality than is immediately obvious. On an ongoing basis, you should be product managing your website for ongoing quality, change, and coherence, including defining your ongoing work program. Looking for opportunities to streamline things for stakeholders, while offering an appropriate level of flexibility is an important piece of product management.
Making big changes? Focus to help frame the flexibility discussion.
As Seth mentions in his blog post, teams need to have mature discussions about the “balance of control.” The above discussion on streamlining should be an ongoing process as part of your website product management. Teams doing early planning in developing master plans, one of the most important aspects is clearly defining the vision of what they are attempting. This probably includes refining the vision: as teams dive into the different aspects of their vision (and at a high level the people, processes, technology, content, etc. required to implement it) to confirm the vision will work, they will probably realize the vision needs to change a bit.
This process of defining the vision while confirming it is possible is important when defining flexibility for the following reasons:
- It grounds the discussion of control, both initially and on an going basis (and having these discussions early rather than later means fewer blow-ups later).
- Senior management has an opportunity to confirm or change the broad goals, rather than jumping right into details (where different stakeholders may push for flexibility that run counter to broader goals). Note that with one recent client of mine, it became obvious that senior management (as opposed to particular site owners) was very interested in consistency and being able to make web presence-wide changes, so this could be accounted for in the vision and master plan.
- See if you pass the laugh test, before continuing.
Flexibility in grayscale
Content contributors often hear the word “standards” and run for the hills, and people often think in terms of flexibility in a binary “yes, flexible” or “no, locked down.”
But it’s much more subtle than this, and will probably be the topic of another blog post. That said, here are some key things to look at when defining how flexible to make your site:
- What sites (if you have a large web presence with lots of sites or sections of sites) will be standardized and which will be completely on their own?
- What components of pages / IA will be standardized? For example, a standard template could be nothing more than a shell with a standard header and footer, or it could prescribe many more components on a page.
- How deep will the standards be? For a particular component that is being standardized, is it completely locked down to a particular value, a palette of options, open with some filtering, or completely open?
In other words, flexibility is more in grayscale than black and white, and you should attempt to shoot for the middle ground allowing streamlined flexibility.
For more on standards, see “Will the real standard please step forward” and “Standards aren’t defined, they’re architected.”
