SharedStatus

Assigning Tasks to Others

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 15:22:00 +0000

by David Alison

All too often a project fails or a problem happens in a business because something doesn’t get done correctly, on time or in some cases at all. In order for a group of people to function properly together each team member needs to know their role and just as importantly how to properly task others on their team when they need to delegate something. This is just as true of peers working together as it is in a classic manager / subordinate relationship.

Here is a list of do’s and don’t’s for sharing tasks with other people

Do: Keep the task assignment simple
When you assign a task to someone think it through and make it as clear as possible without being too wordy. This is of course easy for small, simple tasks (Example: Replace the toner in the printer) but not so on larger tasks. If the task requires more than a short paragraph to describe then chances are you should break it up into multiple tasks.

Don’t: Keep people working on something you no longer need
The one thing that’s worse than telling someone that you no longer need something they are in the middle of working on is to just let that person keep working on it when you know it’s no longer needed. Business needs, competitive threats and reactions to industry news can all quickly change priorities. Letting someone continue to spend time on a task that will only result in it being filed in the trash can is incredibly demoralizing.

Do: Make the task clearly achievable
The best tasks to assign to others (and even yourself) are tasks that have a very clear completion status. There is a reason many contractors ask their clients to sign off on work being complete; it signifies to both parties that the project is done. If you have a task that has a subjective completion make sure you add something measurable so that both you and the assignee understand what needs to be done. Example: “Improve system performance for Widget creation” becomes “Reduce Widget creation time to under 0.5 seconds”.

Don’t: Call someone to ensure they “Got the email”
You create a task for someone, define it well and then send off an email assigning it to someone. Then you immediately grab the phone (or hit them up in IM, or walk by their desk) and ask if they got the email. While that may be fine for something really critical it often breaks down the productivity of the person performing the task for you. SharedStatus can help here because if you assign a task to someone else and they accept it, you can receive a notification.

Do: Set a due date
Having a task without a due date means that it will likely never get done. How so? Tasks without due dates are often to be completed “as time permits” or “when you are free”. If the task isn’t needed right away, set a due date a few weeks out. At a minimum it allows the person actually performing the task to clearly slot it into their existing schedule.

Don’t: Task someone while in the middle of a conversation
The scenario: two people are discussing a particularly vexing problem and realize that something needs to be done. One says to the other “If you work up the data on that problem and send it to me, I can get it fixed”. Since it’s said during the course of a conversation it often gets overlooked because the conversation continues on and may cover other topics. Take a moment right then to record the task or assign it to the person as soon as you return to your desk.

Do: Set expectations for communication
As tasks progress, it’s important that each person (assigner and assignee) are able to communicate on how the task is progressing, especially if this is a complex task with external dependencies that may delay it being achieved. Keeping a running status of the progress of assigned tasks can go a long way towards helping the assigner know what’s going on and not having to constantly ask for updates.

Following these basic guidelines will help you minimize meetings to check on the status of tasks you’ve assigned (or been assigned) and keep each of your respective team members focused on what they need to get done.

New user interface updates to SharedStatus

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 19:59:00 +0000

We just released some new user interface updates to SharedStatus. Some of these are just subtle tweaks to make the pages cleaner, while others are designed to add a little sex-appeal. At least that's how Josiah describes them!

The navigation bar along the left side now has small icons next to each entry:

In addition you'll see changed in the way messages are presented:

Not the comments for a message are not auto-expanded in the message area, making it easier to find the discussion right from the top level.

Another change is with the main Dashboard:

The tabs are now much easier to see and navigate with. Take a moment to browse around and let us know what you think!

Where to find a business partner

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 05:00:00 +0000

By David Alison

There are lots of reasons people want to work with a partner when starting or growing a business. In many cases a partnership happens out of a shared passion; two or more people discuss an insanely great idea and before you know it they are sketching out a product or business plan on a cocktail napkin. Then there are those that have an idea but recognize they need someone that has skills they lack or maybe want to share the crushing workload that comes with starting a business.

Finding one or more business partners can be an interesting challenge. Not only do you have to make sure you’re picking the right partner, you need to have some candidates to draw from in the first place. But where do you look?

Friends and Colleagues
The most common place to find a business partner is within your current circle of friends and colleagues. If you’re a university student it may be someone you have classes with or have teamed up with on a project. Maybe you’ve been out in the workforce for a while and you’ve got a lunch group you’ve been talking to about an idea. It could even be a relative that you know is interested and has experience in the business you want to start.

Going inside of your close circle is very common and often can lead to great partnerships. You know the person pretty well and likely have seen that they have an expertise that can help your business. Provided you don’t add a partner from this circle purely because you like them and “it would be cool to work together”, this is the best place to start a search.

Some Famous Examples

Hewlett Packard: Bill Hewlett and David Packard attended Stanford together and became friends during a 2 week camping trip.
Apple: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak met when Jobs had a summer job at a company where Wozniak was working.
Microsoft: Bill Gates and Paul Allen met while they attended Lakeside School as young teenagers before heading off to college.
Google: Larry Page and Sergey Brin met at Stanford University while working on a research project.

In addition to these there are the family connections. McDonalds was originally the result of brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald building a series of restaurants together. Warner Brothers Studios was formed by 4 brothers laboring through the early film industry. The first airplane was the result of brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright toiling away together.

So what do you do if you don’t have a sibling or friend with the skills needed to help you build your business?

Leverage the Social Web
With the incredible popularity of the social web, getting together with people has never been easier. Facebook is good because so many people now have Facebook accounts; chances are an old friend or colleague you may want to chat with about a business idea has an account. LinkedIn is even better because it’s designed around the concept of business networking and introducing yourself to others through each person’s network. You can update your profile to reflect what you are looking for in your business relationships.

Whereas a complete stranger trying to friend you on Facebook has a bit of a creep factor to it, that stigma doesn’t apply on LinkedIn. Reaching out to strangers is expected there. If you do reach out to a stranger on LinkedIn, explain why (a shared interest in SEO for example). Don’t send the standard “You look like someone I should be networking with...” request - those look spammy and are often ignored.

Twitter can also be a valuable tool in networking. Pick a topical area you want to focus on for your business and do some searches on Twitter to see who is talking about that. When you see tweets that look interesting, check out the profile of the person writing it and follow them. As you see those conversations evolve in your Twitter stream, you’ll start to see that there are others you may also want to follow. Engage people on Twitter and before you know it you’ll start spawning off private conversations and getting to know the right people.

Topical blogs are also a great way of finding people that are interested in the areas you are. If for example you are looking for an engineering partner to help with a green technology business, search for blogs that cover green technology and start following both the posts and also the conversations. Many targeted blogs have a micro-community that form around them.

Always Be Networking
Meet Ups are a great way to get together with others interested in the same space as you. Very often you will get a chance to meet fellow—or aspiring—entrepreneurs that are looking to start or grow their business. Jump over to Meetup.com and see if there are networking events in your area. If not, consider starting one.

A few guidelines when attending a meetup: don’t immediately throw out “I’m looking for a partner for my new business”. That’s like a single person walking into a bar and starting off a conversation with “I’m looking for a spouse.” Learn what others are doing and share where you are with your idea. Be honest on the stage your company is in—especially it's just an idea at that point. If you have expertise in a particular area, offer it up. The goal at a meetup is to identify people you want to invest in from a networking standpoint.

At these types of events you will often hear about some interesting new technologies. If one is related to your needs, offer up to be a beta tester for them. If you want to endear yourself to a fellow entrepreneur, give them detailed feedback on their product. Getting decent feedback can be very challenging and is generally highly appreciated. If you later ask that entrepreneur for help finding a good partner they'll be far more likely to help you out.

Very often these events will be sponsored by venture firms to help foster the startup community and give the venture firm a chance to see early stage companies they may want to invest in. Some of these events may be attended by a handful of people and others in large cities can have hundreds.

Don’t expect to get into a detailed conversation if the venue is very large. Come prepared with a pocket full of business cards and don’t hesitate to pass them out. After the meetup send follow up emails to people and ask if they would like to get together for a cup of coffee. You can do lunch if you really hit it off with the person but it’s generally better to meet at a local Starbucks; it’s much easier to talk to someone when you don’t have a mouthful of food, there’s no worrying about who picks up the tab and if it turns out the meeting is awkward you can wrap it up much more quickly.

Introduce these new members of your network to others you know and don’t hesitate to ask if you are looking for someone with specific skills. People attend these kind of events to both help themselves and in return help others. The more you work with these folks the more likely you are to find someone with the skills you need.

A word of warning: don’t just connect people for the sake of connecting. If you know someone that builds high-end web sites and their average engagement is $10K, don’t send over a contact that is looking to get some quick on-page SEO optimization done unless you know that’s a strength of theirs. If you connect people of quality together you are far more likely to get quality connections in return.

Partnerships Happen
Schools, existing businesses and family environments are fertile breeding grounds for business partnerships because they center around communities of like minded individuals that are already working towards a common goal.

Cultivate your network carefully and over time you will find that what you are really doing is inserting yourself into a new community, one populated by fellow entrepreneurs that are hungry to build up their business. You may not find a new business partner overnight but in time either the right person will pop up on your radar or you will have learned enough that maybe you don’t need that partner after all.

A new website and a new offer

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 23:38:00 +0000

We have just done a major update to our web site to make our product offering clearer and also to provide a little more information about us as a company. Please take a moment to check it out!

In addition to the web site refresh we have also added a new offer to our Free accounts. Sign up for a Free account and we'll give you 1GB of file storage and project chat rooms for 15 days. Try out the file storage and chat features - if you like them you can always upgrade to one of our paid accounts and make it permanent.

If you decide not to upgrade your files will remain in your projects but you won't be able to add any additional files and you will not be able to access the chat rooms any longer. As always, if you've got questions, we've got answers. Just ask!

When to hire your first employee

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 03:00:00 +0000

By David Alison

As an entrepreneur you get to experience lots of major milestones, some more important than others. Coming up with the idea, finding the right partner, incorporating the business, launching the web site, getting that first paying customer or client. Each of these—including landing funding if that’s the fuel to grow the business—are signs that you are progressing.

Another major milestone is the day you decide you need to hire your first employee. You suddenly go from being responsible to your partners and customers to realizing you have a regular payroll you have to cover. Just as you can feel good about the work you do, you can get tremendous satisfaction from knowing the business you created is now adding value by creating jobs for people.

As I reflect back on the successes I’ve had with my various business ventures one of the most rewarding experiences was creating jobs for others. As an employer I got a chance to play an important part in the lives of people, helping them expand their careers and watching them grow their families. That reward came with lots of stress, especially when times were tight and we worried how we would make payroll.

Given all that’s on the line, below is some guidance on when you should hire that first employee.

Can't see the forest for the trees
Entrepreneurs are used to having a heavy workload. It's just part of the gig. What can be difficult is realizing that one day you (and potentially your partners) are holding your company back because you simply can't get everything done to make your company more successful. You've done a great job building up interest in your company and now running it is taking more and more of a toll on you. Product features get delayed, marketing programs don't get executed, affiliates and partners are put on the back burner because you're too busy answering email questions and fighting fires. You need to be focused on the big picture but all of these small tasks are making it harder and harder to do that. You can't see the forest because all these trees keep getting in the way.

Employee vs partner
It’s important to distinguish the difference between hiring an employee and finding a partner to help you grow the business. Though an additional partner may join you with the expectation of collecting a regular salary, they need to understand that if the company does poorly they will be in the first group not to be paid. A partner is expected to make the business a significant part of their life and be willing to make sacrifices on behalf of the business when needed. This is not the case with traditional employees.

A partner with any significant ownership stake in the business should add significant value, beyond the actual work they accomplish. Choose your partners wisely and once you determine it’s not a partner you need, you can move on.

Employee vs contractor
If you find your business constrained by manpower you need to evaluate whether you need a contractor or a regular employee. The easiest way to determine this is to identify if the additional work this person would do is for a project or a process. Projects have well defined start and end dates. A process is part of the business and happens every day.

Projects work well for contractors because the work is well bounded and once complete you don’t need to retain that person’s services. For a startup it’s very hard to find someone that can come in and do a fantastic job on a project that requires detailed skills, then keep them working on other equally challenging tasks.

Contractors are also a good option if the stability of your business isn't quite there yet. Many times you can bring in someone on a temporary basis and convert them to become one of your first employees.

Outside funded vs self funded
If you haven’t hired any employees yet and your goal is to obtain outside funding you may want to wait until you ink the deal on your first round. Very often the goal of an Angel round is to—among other things—help the founders hire those first few employees to get the ball rolling. Hiring people in anticipation of landing that round of funding is pretty risky and adds unnecessary stress to an already difficult role as a founder.

Self funded businesses have a slightly different challenge. You need to make sure you have the ongoing revenues needed to support a new employee. Keep in mind that not only do you have the actual cost of a new employee to absorb, you also have the additional expenses that come with them, both up front and ongoing. If the employee will be generating revenue for you, make sure you have enough work queued up to keep them productive.

What that first employee needs
A new employee will require a computer. It’s reasonable to expect a partner or contractor to furnish their own computer but now you’ll need to go through the process of providing one for your employees. Don’t forget the cost of any software licenses you will expect them to use.

Depending on the employee you’ll probably need to get a phone line put together too. With services like Google Voice and Skype it’s possible to provide voice services very cost effectively. Much like a computer, don’t assume that a new employee will simply use their own personal cell phone for work.

Adding a real employee to your staff means using a payroll system. In the US that means something that will calculate and withhold taxes and help you submit them to the proper government entities on a quarterly basis. You can turn this over to your accountant or a contracted bookkeeper, use a tool like Quickbooks to manage it or use an online service like Bank of America Small Business solutions. This is an area where you don’t want to just wing it - paying taxes properly is an important part of having a well managed business. Most of the tax responsibility with partners and contractors is on them but with employees it’s on your business.

Don't forget training. Unless you are hiring general office help, it will take a while for that person to get up and running and understanding your products and/or process. That first employee means that you the busy entrepreneur will be taking time out of a compressed schedule to bring them up to speed. Your business will take a couple of steps backwards before again moving forward at a steady pace.

The ideal first employee
That first employee you hire needs to be someone special. Flexibility is the key and getting someone that can help with mundane tasks can take an extraordinary load of work off your plate as an entrepreneur. Chances are you’re going to hire more than one employee and as your company continues to grow that first one will play an important role in subsequent hires.

Though you may give that first hire the title Customer Service Rep they may also have the unofficial titles Assistant to the Founders, Keyword Research Specialist, Receptionist, IT Help Desk, etc. As your company grows you can find a spot where that person excels and let them focus on it but initially they may be doing a lot of everything. You need to find someone that is comfortable working in those conditions.

Personally I've had several "first employees" in my various business ventures and the common theme I've found that worked was getting someone that was comfortable taking the daily grind off my plate. They were good (if not great) at written and verbal communications so I felt comfortable with them representing my company to customers. They were reliable and I could count on them being there when I needed them. They were smart and able to pick up new technology quickly. Several of them came in fresh out of college with no work experience and we were able to set clear guidance on how things should be done, not break old habits that had been acquired at previous jobs.

When you decide that you’re ready to hire that first employee, I recommend you read Jason Cohen’s Hiring Employee #1. It has some great pointers and includes a lot of additional resources to help you find the right person.

Feature Update - Project Chat Rooms are now searchable

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Last night (March 2, 2011) we updated our project chat rooms to include some great new features:

Updated User Interface
We have optimized the chat room view to be easier to read, with a much wider message area and cleaner view of who is currently in the room.

Transcript Search
You can now search your entire project transcript history—going back to the day you started your project—to search for key terms in your chat.

Calendar Browse
Looking to see what was said on Wednesday, January 12, 2011? You can quickly select a day from the transcript history and jump into what was said on that day.

The SharedStatus chat rooms are a powerful way to keep your team in touch throughout the day and with these new features you can feel confident that anything you discuss can be referenced in the future. Chat rooms are available to all SharedStatus users with Basic or higher level accounts.

Creating SharedStatus Labels for a Project

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 14:00:00 +0000

Labels are a powerful way to organize your SharedStatus projects. The key advantage over having a single “category” is that you can apply as many labels as you like to any message, task or file in a project. Very often things aren’t easily classified with a single attribute; labels let you think about your project assets in a different way.

A label can represent a variety of different attributes. To update yours just go to the Settings areas of any of your projects. Below are a few examples we at SharedStatus use to help manage our internal projects:

Critical: We apply the critical label to any task (or message) that requires immediate attention. At any point in time we can see what’s critical on a project by limiting our view to items that have the critical label applied.

Need Feedback: This is actually a transitory label. With the large quantity of messages and tasks that we place in our more active projects, sometimes we want a way to call out things that we want feedback on from other team members. Once the creator of the task or message has received enough feedback they remove that label.

Reference: There are many times when we need a place to record important instructions for something. It may be as simple as a process for uploading files to a specific web server or details on how to renew some certificate. By applying the reference label we call out to any project members that this is something that they may not need to read right away but could serve as reference material in the future.

Competition: As we discover new competitors in our space we create a message in one of our core projects that includes a link to their web site and any information that may be useful in the future.

Bug: If we find a bug in our product, we create a task to fix it and apply the bug label. If the bug is critical, then the Critical label above is also applied.

Feature: Similar to a bug, the Feature label is used to identify an area of the product that could be improved or added. As we have brainstorming meetings to identify new features we record them and apply the Feature label; sometimes the feature is used to address a bug so both Bug and Feature get applied.

Future: This label is often used for features that are considered “long term”. Basically the Future label is applied to items that have not been clearly defined or scheduled (most often something that has a Future label as well).

RC (for Release Candidate): As we cycle through our development efforts, we apply the RC label to tasks that are being actively coded up for the next release. This makes it very easy to see what should make it into the next major cycle.

Hosting: As a SaaS (Software as a Service) provider we have a lot of information that is specific to our hosting environment. This label helps us quickly see hosting related issues. If we are engaged in a conversation with one of our hosting providers a quick click of this label tells us of any other outstanding issues we may need to tell them about.

These are just some of the labels we use in several of our projects. Right now labels are a powerful way to organize your SharedStatus information and we have a range of features identified—and appropriately labeled with feature in one of our projects—to bring you soon!

Having what it takes to be an entrepreneur

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 06:00:00 +0000

By David Alison

Have you given any thought to leaving the "security" of a regular paycheck and going out on your own? If so, this blog post is for you. It is my not so humble opinion that working for yourself—owning your own business—is one of the greatest experiences a person can have. I equate it to the difference between living in your parents home and going out on your own and getting a place to live as a young adult. It is initially pretty frightening but the feeling of independence and growth is incredible and once you’ve done it successfully you cannot imagine going back to live with Mom and Dad.

I recognize that not everyone is cut out to start his or her own business or even work outside the structure of a corporate environment. The skills required to start and then successfully run a business are not always the same and require that you switch gears quite a bit.

I’ve collected a list of attributes that can help you determine if you are the kind of person that can start your own business. I’ve been networking with the owners of businesses of all shapes and sizes for many years and found quite a few common themes that I hope you will find valuable.

You are a good candidate to start a business because…

You are willing to take risks
This is the most obvious one – so obvious I hesitated including it on the list. Starting a business is a risky proposition. You need to be sure that you have set yourself up as much as possible to absorb the risk associated with starting a business, especially the financial issues. Only you can determine what level of risk is acceptable but a good rule of thumb is to have enough money or financial security squirreled away to last you through the time it would take to land a regular job. I’ve known people that didn’t feel comfortable until they had a year of living expenses and others that had virtually no savings, just a surplus of confidence.

It may be possible for you to start your business while you are still employed by someone else – if so, that’s outstanding. Just make sure you are not going to violate any employment agreement you may have with your company. If you (like me) are a software engineer and currently gainfully employed, pay careful attention to your existing employment agreement if you have one. Many technology companies will lay claim to any invention made while an engineer is employed by them. If it’s at all possible without jeopardizing your job, let your boss know what you are doing. It is much easier to operate in the clear light of day.

You are an optimist (but a pragmatic one)

If you are going into business by yourself it is critical that you are an optimist. Not someone that lives in a state of denial the entire time mind you—you have to be realistic—but someone that sees positive potential in most things. If you are constantly looking at why something will fail you are going to go out of business pretty quickly. It is the job of others to tell you why something can't be done and for you to prove them wrong.

This is not to say that you cannot have a pessimist as a partner. Very often having someone that balances out an optimist and throws a dose of reality on the situation creates a good balance.

You have a vision for your business and can share it with others
Having a good idea is one thing, being able to articulate it well and get others excited about it is another. If you are going to be the one that starts the business you have to be able to get others excited about it. Keep in mind that friends and family will usually love anything that you present to them. Get outside of your circle and comfort zone by asking people that would be potential customers or clients.

The list of people that you need to convince that you have a great business concept is quite long: potential employees, bankers, venture capitalists, partners, distributors, landlords, etc. All of these folks will want to hear from you why they should take a risk on your business.

I personally never felt comfortable doing large presentations to these types of groups. I’m great with one-on-ones and very small groups but my stress level rises dramatically when I’m doing a canned presentation in front of a group of people. I compensated for this by practicing my presentations over and over again until I could present the content on auto-pilot. Once that level was achieved I was able to riff during my presentations and ensure I was reading my audience and adjusting pace and humor to keep people engaged.

Because this is a personal weakness of mine I’ve had to work extra hard to overcome it.

You can accept criticism
As soon as you share your business idea outside of your familiar circle of friends and family you will be presented with criticism. Depending on the venue, that criticism may be blunt and even hurtful. You will have invested an incredible amount of time and energy into a concept and the last thing you want is for people to tear it down.

You must have the ability to not take criticism personally. It’s fine to be defensive if the critique is off the mark or fails to account for something obvious. Depending on the venue, people can have ulterior motives for their criticism that you will need to account for. Most criticism though is an opportunity to improve. If you find yourself defensive with all criticism you will likely alienate the very people that are trying to help you improve your business.

You can modify your lifestyle
When you are first starting out it is critical that you can adopt a frugal life style. While you were gainfully employed you may have eaten out often, taken nice vacations or bought a new car every couple of years. You need to be able to adjust that quickly to take up the slack and minimize your financial risk. That frugality will help you with the business as well – it’s all a mindset kind of deal.

A frugal life style will also lead to a closely monitored business.

You have a great relationship with your life partner
If you are living with someone or are married, it needs to be a strong relationship. Some people have successfully started and built up businesses while they were in a lousy relationship – the business became a sanctuary, something that kept them away from the person they didn’t really want to deal with anyway. Others have had a relatively fragile relationship fail when faced with the time commitment, stress and financial burden associated with a new business.

This one is very personal for me. I was blessed with a fantastic wife that supported me every step of the way. On the days I just felt like I couldn’t deal with it I had her to turn to. When I questioned why I was going through the painful process of starting my business I would look at the photos on my desk of my wife and three children. It was all the inspiration I needed to make it work.

If you are in a relationship you need to know if your partner is going to support you. It will not be all happiness and light mind you – my wife and I got into many heated debates on issues that were complicated by the stress of running the business. If however we had a defective relationship it likely would have failed.

You are a jack-of-all-trades
Have you ever been described or described yourself to others as a jack-of-all-trades? If so, that’s a good thing when starting a business. If you are starting the business by yourself then you are obviously the CEO, but until you get employees you will also have a couple more key titles:

VP of Marketing: You need to develop and execute a plan to promote your product or service.
VP of Sales: You have to develop a sales process and make it happen
VP of Development / Production: Someone has to build your product or provide that service. That someone is you. Outsourcing it? You still have to manage it.
VP of Support / Customer Service: You will need to deal with customer issues and resolve problems people have.
VP of Finance / HR: Run your accounting software, pay the bills and manage any employees you may have.

Depending on the type of business you want, one person can pull off all of these roles and still lead a semi-normal life, though like anything else you need to be pretty good at them if you want it to be successful.

You get easily frustrated with bureaucracy
As companies grow larger they develop processes and systems to help them run more efficiently. Over time those processes evolve and change and can become less efficient. If you are working in a company and see all the places where processes can be improved or eliminated, you have a trait that is valuable in starting your own company.

If you work for a company that is unwilling or unable to change an inefficient bureaucracy and it drives you nuts, you have some of the fuel required to power your business. Anger with the status quo is a powerful motivator.

You want financial independence
One day you look at your finances and realize that while you thought you were running hard in a race you are actually running on a treadmill. Between car payments, rent or a mortgage, living expenses, etc. you make a decent living but you are not advancing your lifestyle to your satisfaction. If you have children then it’s even more pronounced because you have their living expenses and education to worry about as well.

In my experience the best way to provide yourself with the opportunity for financial independence is to control your own destiny, and that means starting your own business. Not every business is destined to create great wealth for the person that starts it. Many people create life-style businesses that generate just enough revenue to pay the owners a good wage.

Whether you are creating a business with the intention of selling it to obtain wealth or you are creating a long term life-style business, either can provide you with financial independence.

You are patient and don’t give up easily
A critical characteristic for a person starting a business is persistence. You need to be able to face rejection and failure not as a personal thing but as a challenge to improve. A new business faces many obstacles that will tear you down and make you want to run screaming for the perceived safety of regular employment if you let them get to you.

It’s also important to understand that some businesses take a very long time to succeed. We live in an age where things move so quickly—especially in the technology world—that a business that isn’t generating massive revenue or traffic in a short time is perceived as a failure. The reality is, many of the overnight successes that people see took years of build up and behind the scenes work before they got there.

You like to work really hard
The final attribute I’ll cover is your work ethic. If you want to build a successful business you have to have the capacity to work very, very hard. You will often hear people say that it’s not about working harder; it’s about working smarter. That mindset is great for employees that have well defined jobs but fails when it comes to a person starting a business. You have to work smarter AND harder because there is so much to do.

If you are a clock-punching kind of person then clearly you should not be starting a business, regardless of how insanely great your idea is.

Making the decision to start a business is not one you should take lightly, however if you make a go of it I congratulate you. Regardless of the result of the business, the experience you will acquire will enrich you in ways few jobs can.

How to do usability testing on your web site

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 03:00:00 +0000

By David Alison

Like many web-centric companies our web site is our primary window into the world. It’s the first impression most people will ever get of SharedStatus and it serves a critical role in our business model. Though you can iterate over a design and show internal people, it’s not until you get it into the hands of outsiders that you start to see what works and what doesn’t.

Having a decent software analytics package like Clicky or Google Analytics installed gives you a sense of what people are doing when they visit your site; where they go, how long they spend on key pages, where they exit your site, etc. Use the analytics and perform basic A/B tests on pages and you can dramatically improve traffic flows on your site. The challenge is guessing where people are tripping up so you can design your A/B tests - this is where usability testing can help.

Usability Testing was hard
For many years I worked in technology companies that had usability labs to help validate product designs. In the early days this involved dedicated lab space, video cameras, recording equipment and extraordinary amounts of time to do correctly. We would set up our tests and then have to go out and recruit people to come in and walk through our products. Putting together the reports and editing the video into a single selection of feedback was incredibly time consuming.

Usability testing was clearly for large companies that had the resources to pull this off.

Usability Testing is easy
Not long after our launch I found UserTesting.com. They provided what appeared to be a very simple service: you define a script of tasks you want someone to run through and identify some high level demographics of the kind of person you would like to have look at your site. You pay a set price ($39 / test or $29 / test when buying 3 tests initially). I did the three test option and the experience was excellent.

It took me about 20 minutes to create the short script of what I wanted tested on SharedStatus.com. UserTesting.com provides some templates and helper text that was pretty useful. Early on a Saturday evening I submitted the scripts and ran off to dinner. About 30 minutes later I had three e-mails with links to the test results. I was not expecting this back so quickly and figured the quality would be suspect. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

There is something incredible about watching a complete stranger go through your web site, vocalizing what they are finding as they go through it. Though I have been through hundreds of usability tests over the last 20 years, that didn't stop me from saying out loud "Just click the Features link!!!". Seeing them trip on tasks you thought would be obvious or immediately understand something you thought would be complex is very powerful as a site designer.

Here is a subset of one of the 15 minute long videos I received from UserTesting.com, including our comments overlaid to help you understand what we were realizing as we viewed the video:

We identified areas where people tripped up and had a difficult time with our navigation. Some of the text we were using to describe our product was too vague and left the testers struggling to understand what our product did. We saw minor display errors on one of our pages because of IE compatibility. We found that users really struggled with certain parts of our application that were only exposed to new users.

Needless to say I was incredibly pleased with the results we received from UserTesting.com. The videos and feedback were of such high quality and came back so quickly that we feel we can test new ideas in real time moving forward. We just sat back and watched, pausing the videos to take down notes for changes we needed to implement to our site.

If the only people that give you feedback on your web site are in your personal network (friends, family, colleagues, etc) then you really need to give low cost usability testing a try. You'll likely find out a lot about your site that you probably didn't know.

Best Practices - Building a new web site with the help of SharedStatus

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 06:30:00 +0000

In this series of blog posts we would like to give you some working examples of how to leverage SharedStatus to help you in real world environments. This post will focus on using SharedStatus to help build a new web site.

The first step is to create a project to hold your work. From the main SharedStatus Dashboard click Create a project, then enter the name for the new web site (Spring 2011 Website Refresh for example) and a description.

We're going to include how we want people to use the labels to help keep track of things so for now leave the description blank; we'll return to it after the next few steps.

Labeling Items In Your Project
Next we will add our labels. The labels are important because they will help you organize your project and better understand what needs to be done. The power of labels are that more than one can be applied to an item and they can easily be added or removed as you progress through your project.

Requirements: this label will be used for messages and tasks that contain actual requirements for the web site, usually from the stakeholders.
Feedback Needed: this label will be applied to items as people on the design team create content they want others on the team to provide feedback on. After enough feedback has been received (usually on a message that may include a screen shot or page content, though sometimes a task) the author of that item can remove the Feedback Needed label.
Final: this label is applied to a message, task or file that contains a final decision—either in the item itself or comments within it—that identifies final art, content or key decisions that have been made.
Site Bug: this label is applied as the web site is placed in a production or staging area. As users find problems with the site they can apply this label to tasks requiring attention by the person responsible for fixing them. If your web site and development team is large and complex you may want to add additional labels for content, layout, scripting, artwork, etc.
Design Sample: this label can be applied to designs that have been created, often in the form of screen shots.
Research: This label can be applied to messages that contain links to interesting sites your stakeholders find. They could be competitors or sites that contain design elements you want people to reference later.

Update the Description
With the labels defined you can update the description to reflect how you want people to use the project. This description will appear for users in the project overview and is how you tell them you want them to use the project.

Note: SharedStatus supports Textile formatting (as well as HTML if you are comfortable with that) in the project description so the following example contains tags to make the description look nice to your team members. Copy and paste this into the project description then edit as appropriate:

Welcome to the new website project! This project will be used by everyone on the web site design team. The team will consist of internal team members and outside contractors.

The following labels have been defined and should be used as appropriate:

*Requirements:* Use this label on any items that contain requirements for the web site.

*Feedback Needed:* Apply this label to any item that you want other team members to provide feedback on. Once you have received adequate feedback _please remove the label_.

*Final:* Apply when a task, message or file contains a design or content that has been approved and may need to be referenced later.

*Site Bug:* When you find a bug on the site (layout, content, etc) create a task and apply the Site Bug label to it. Summarize the bug in the task name, then provide any details needed to recreate the problem, especially if it is browser specific. The project manager will later go through and assign the task to the appropriate team member.

*Design Sample:* Apply this label to all designs for artwork, font selection, etc.

*Research:* If you find an interesting site you think others would like to use as a reference for a design element, color scheme, fonts, etc. create a message that contains a link to the site and apply this label to it.

We will be actively using the chatroom for this project so please feel free to stop by at any time.

Invite People
With the project set up complete it's time to invite people into the project. Make sure you cover everyone that has a stake in the web site to join, not just people on your marketing and technical teams. Product managers, sales, support, customer service and executive groups—among others—should be included, even if you wait until further into the project life cycle to add them.

Also, be sure to include any external resources that may need access to this project. One of the more powerful features of SharedStatus is that it's easy to include people from outside of your organization to specific projects.

Setting Milestones
Once the people are in place you can set some high level milestones for your web site. Some milestones could be:

Requirements From All Stakeholders: make sure everyone that has something they need the web site to do has had their requirements submitted.
First Pass Design Samples: A skeleton for the web site has been completed and the team has reviewed and approved it.
Site Design Finalized: The web site design, artwork and stubs for content have been approved and completed.
Site Complete: The site is complete, content and all, and testing has verified the site is ready. All that's left is deploying it.
Site Deployed: The site has been deployed into your production environment.

These milestones may have dates that are well defined up front or may be changed as you progress, it's entirely up to the management style you want to embrace. Milestones are optional but can help you become more structured in hitting your objectives.

Leveraging the Message Area
The message area of you project can be very helpful in letting you discuss high level issues in the beginning of your project, letting the designers ask questions of the stakeholders and vice a versa, as well as capturing things like external news events and competitive data that may impact the site.

Creating Tasks
Task assignment is where the power of SharedStatus really comes through. You don't have to limit the ability to assign tasks to just the manager of the project. Anyone on the project team can create a task and assign it to someone else on the team.

In the early stages of the project many of the tasks will revolve around requirements gathering from each of your stakeholders. A good solution for the requirements gathering portion is to create tasks for each stakeholder, soliciting their requirements by a specific date. Apply the Requirements label on these tasks and you can quickly see the state of your requirements by entering the Task list and selecting the Requirements label. Open and completed requirements will be listed there.

Once you move on to the design phase, assign tasks to your designers and site architects for the actual site design elements. As they complete their designs they can put them into a message (with either a link or attached screen shot) and the Feedback Needed label applied. The project manager can then create tasks for each of the stakeholders asking them to provide their feedback on any of the designs that concern them. Once the stakeholders have submitted their feedback and marked their tasks complete you can either repeat that process or move on to final building and the move into the production environment.

The beauty of SharedStatus is that you can handle your project however you want. You can structure the use of labels, tasks and messages as we have in this example or you can simply create tasks for people in your project and move on.

It's up to you!