[Sigia-l] What do you call that place between the databaseandthe live site?

[Adrian Howard]

On 15 May 2007, at 13:11, Jonathan Baker-Bates wrote:
[snip]
> If that analysis is correct, then I'd be interested to see how just
> looking at it will make the problem go away. As I asked Lisa: how
> exactly do you do you manage content in the design process when you  
> have
> a lot of (possibly even unknown) content to deal with in a situation
> that by definition is changing? The traditional response is mainly to
> ignore the issue and hope it sorts itself out. It usually does of
> course, but at the cost of lots of time, effort and compromise.
[snip]

The short version is - I don't do all my IA work up front. Personally  
I think that for the vast majority of projects the idea of being able  
to do all the IA work up front is broken.

I do just enough IA to get development rolling, and expect to guide  
and refine the IA as development progresses. I sit and work with the  
team throughout the development process (and, indeed, wear a  
developer hat on occasion).

Rather than set out with the idea that all the IA should be complete  
before development has started, I set out with the idea that the IA  
is only going to be right after we've developed the product. Changes  
aren't seen as unexpected and bad, but as expected and useful.

Instead of spending effort on getting stuff right up front, we spend  
effort on making things easy to change. That way we can deal with the  
inevitable scope changes in a responsible manner.

Of course this means that you have to be working in an environment  
that's accepting of change. Where developers, IA, customers can all  
communicate together from the start of the project to the end. You  
need a cultural shift from IA as director of work, to IA as  
collaborator in work.

I find agile processes like XP and Scrum very accepting of this way  
of working.

That's the short version :-)

Cheers,

Adrian