Despite best efforts sometimes huge projects are shelved, great ideas scrapped or because there is a budget it is spent no matter what.
Here are a few handy watch-outs to stop burning budget.
There are a lot of people attending meetings.
I would challenge when there are a lot of people attending a meeting. Everyone seems to be an absolute specialist/expert with a fancy job title that no-one knows what it means or what they do. Half the people in the room aren't listening, or they're on their laptops or smartphones. Remember that most resources need to get charged out at anywhere between $130 per hour but as far up as $400 per hour for professional services. Before you know it a one-hour meeting has cost upward of $4k and for what?
Do you really need a fancy solution?
When your business has huge traffic hitting the site, or complex systems in place that require in depth workflows to operate then ok, perhaps a platform like AEM hosted on AKAMAI is probably worth spending a few hundred thousand dollars on. However if your organisation requires a brochure site with a few pictures and small copy, the entire internet is not going to be hitting it all at once. Why not keep it simple?
Complex ideas?
Complicated ideas are great and I love working out how to deliver them in a way that is easy for a consumer to understand, digest and act on. However be warned the more complex the idea, the more complex it is to figure out how to deliver it. Huge teams can be called upon to create the ideal solution, make sure all the boxes are ticked and everyone understands what's going on before the project can move forward. Most of the time in my experience it's something that's been done before that's been dressed up as something else and therefore if it's been done before, then it's already got a solution that works.
Question rates, budgets, time spent ... everything!
Ever met anyone that likes to fill in timesheets? If a task is boring it's likely to be done without any real care and attention? What about assigning a large budget at the beginning of a project? How can anyone honestly say that dividing up $1,000,000 when at the start of a project no-one is 100% sure what it is we're doing? Sound like whatever you have to spend is going to be spent? How many members of the team that are assigned to singing off budgets are across the rate cards used to quote? Are the rates even listed in the estimate? How much detail is listed in the estimate? Worth thinking about.
Hope these few thought starters help. If you need any advice or direction, please don't hesitate to contact us.