Friendly Design Co.

Rachael—How would you describe the way the Friendly Design team works and how has that changed during or since taking the Apprenticeship?

Rachael: That’s both an easy and a hard question to answer. I think one of the biggest things is that we just know what to expect from each other. The way we work as a team is more organized and intentional. There is a system behind our project management. There is a lot less back and forth between people because there is more understanding and trust as coworkers and better documentation we can fall back on when we need an answer to a question, for example. We don’t have to talk about every single project detail. It has allowed us to be more collaborative and productive and fluid. It’s more touch-and-go. We get less bogged down in each others’ unnecessary minutia.

That’s a common theme when I talk to people about the impact of the apprenticeship program. Things just seem to flow more smoothly. That’s great. Ross—what else from your perspective has changed about the way Friendly Design does business? Have you seen an impact in other areas like operations or sales?

Ross: For one, everyone understands their roles more clearly. It’s enabled us to build a better organizational structure across the board. It’s helped everyone specialize more in what they are good at and want to do because they no longer have to do so many other things. I am able to not be a project manager and truly be a creative director and work on sales and focus more on growth. Our designers are able to have more time designing because they don’t have to filter through dozens of emails to understand what is needed from them. That sort of thing. I think it’s just allowed everyone to focus more—taking that work off everyone else’s plate and turning it into one dedicated position. It’s hard to measure the exact impact of that in terms of numbers. But my week—and what I am able to accomplish within a week is completely different. And I feel that will be the same for a lot of members of our team. I was doing a lot of project management and now I don’t have to do any and that’s great. I’ve been able to focus more on business development because of that.

You can see the difference in the people as much as the bottom line.

Ross: For sure. And there are ways to extrapolate that out. I mean there was a project we got solely because I was able to pitch and get it for us and do the necessary follow-up. The fact that I was able to focus on that is a direct result of these changes we had been making. We’ve been having some of these outcomes meetings with clients and sometimes it is hard to point out exactly why something happened, but it’s easy to say that since we’ve started, a whole bunch of these kinds of positive changes have happened.

It can be hard to trace causation, but you can see things changing.

Ross: Totally. Things are definitely shaped differently. Projects start with project managers now where they used to have to start with me. I think it lets our team be less siloed on projects because there is always a PM—at least one other person to talk over things with and help keep an eye on things. There are far fewer fires to put out, far fewer stressful moments. And I haven’t measured this, but I would bet that the average amount of late hours worked has gone down. I wish I had a percentage to share, but I can firmly say that people leave on time far more often than they used to. And that on its own is great. It’s making our lives better.

Things don’t sneak up on us anymore. There’s a lot less ‘Oh shoot, this is due tomorrow’ or whatever.

Is there anything you want to add Rachael? Have you noticed an impact anywhere else that stands out?

Rachael: I only knew what project management was through what I had learned from [Ross] and Geoff. So it was this great, granular look into how exactly project management affects all aspects of the business. It went specifically from business development and the numbers game down to our day-to-day tasks. I was really surprised by how much these changes could affect Friendly. Because the way we did business is with a fixed bid with a fixed scope. And a lot of the time, when we got into a project (because we do so much strategy), what the client needs changes. The scope changes but then the budget wouldn’t necessarily change with that. But thanks to what I learned in the program, I started calling that out and paying a lot of attention to—when scope changes happened, or when extra revisions were added—that we were compensated for when those changes happened and when that extra work happened. It allowed the designers to have more time and it gave us more business within projects we had already sold.

Great!

Rachael: I mean halfway through the program—at the point when the classes stopped—I looked at the four months following and the total added budget for those four months was pretty much the equivalent of taking on one more project (given our average budget). Within four months, we added a full project’s revenue onto our current project with­out hav­ing to man­age and onboard a new client.

Ross: That is something I have seen you get even better at as time has gone on. You’ve gotten more comfortable with it and it’s something that, even when I wasn’t managing a project—I was checking in the health of the projects—I felt like I had to swoop in and catch. Now it’s being caught before it gets to me. Now, instead of having conversations about ‘there’s a client with a problem, what do we do?’ we have conversations that are more like ‘this client is over on scope and this is how much I’m planning on charging them, is that good?’

Okay, this question is for both of you. Looking back over the past year, what’s one thing that you are proud of?

Rachael: We recently had a project with a client that we had worked with before. And the point of contact on their side was the same as well and I was managing the project again. The first project was before I took the course when I was just kind of dabbling and taking things off Ross’ plate. The project was fine until the very end when it turned into a big mess. It was over budget and was a big pain in the ass for our developer. With the second project—another website project with the same client and the same point of contact—the same things happened. They were late on feedback and had lots of changes and things like that. But it got done on time, it was super-organized, our developer was much happier, the client was much happier. They were very pleased; every other email was like ‘this project has been great, thanks so much for being so organized and reminding us to give you feedback, and being diligent about deadlines.’ That was a moment for me. That project went so smoothly, stayed on the timeline, stayed on budget, everything. Comparing that to the earlier project was eye-opening. I saw that I had all these skills so that, no matter what came up during a project, I knew I could handle it.

Ross: When I think about how working with us should look from the outside—from our clients perspective—I know that we do great design and development work. That has always been the case. But I don’t think we have always looked like we have our shit together. The processes we have been able to bring to our project management have allowed us to show that not only is our work great, but the way we do our work is just as great. The whole process is as smooth and tight as the finished product.

Rachael—what was one thing that surprised you or was unexpected in terms of your personal learning over the course of the apprenticeship?

Rachael: It’s called project management so you are managing projects. But I think the surprising thing for me was just how much it is about managing people and their personalities and their needs and styles of working. I’m a pretty type-A person so being organized and on top of deadlines and creating documentation comes much more naturally to me. But I think delving into the more human side of project management was surprising as it was rewarding. It was like, ‘of course, I have to deal with all of these humans who are a part of these projects.’ I was also surprised by how much it did end up coming naturally to me once I was able to start parsing through the class content with my classmates. Seeing how they responded to some of the questions and how they would talk through problems and how their different perspectives about approaching project management really helped me learn about the human side of project management in a really nuanced and powerful way. As Ross was saying earlier, different people have different experiences with different project managers. So beginning to understand your own ego and personality can affect a project was as valuable as it was surprising.