@ncsumarit @oitdesign

THE MAKING OF A

WEB TEAMJen Riehle McFarland

#highedweb16 #mpd8

▸The Making of a Web Team

▸The Positions

▸The Processes

▸The Planning

▸No one has paid me for my opinions

▸ I like to use Storm Troopers to explain my points

ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION

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My goal is you leave with inspired and with ideas for how to get positions, how to improve your processes, how to make plans for the future of your team

9/2014 1 full-timer 9/2015 3 full-timers4 part-timers/interns

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▸Started in the NC State Help Desk during undergrad

▸B.S. & M.S. from NC State

▸Self-taught in web design

▸Likes Star Wars

ABOUT ME

#highedweb16 #mpd8

▸Located in Raleigh, NC

▸Land-grant college established

1887

▸ 34,015 students; 2,336 faculty;

6,733 staff

▸ 11 colleges plus the Graduate School

▸Go Wolfpack!

ABOUT NC STATE

#highedweb16 #mpd8

Major Campus Multisites

Unit-level Multisites

Stand-aloneSingle Installs + Small Multisites

OIT

ORIED

DASA

OFA

HR

Free “Blogs” Environment

Premium “Hosted” Environment

Rest of campus…?

ABOUT NC STATE WEB

We are primarily a WordPress campus, but there is no mandate and plenty of other tools are used.- Slide displays pattern of campus WordPress installs we manage

▸Housed in central IT; part of Outreach, Communications & Consulting

▸Maintain major campus WordPress multisite environments

▸Build custom WP themes and plugins for campus general use

▸Web design, development, support, & training for campus-based clients

ABOUT OIT DESIGN

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- Many clients are in themes we did not develop- We often take over some from old units, grad students and/or off-campus vendors- For some we have a single, technically-literate point of contact; most client contacts are not “web” or “technical” staff

THE POSITIONSPART ONE

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▸October 2009: Web Hosting Service rolls out to campus

▸ 2012: Drupal & WordPress Services (free WordPress “Blogs” and premium “Hosted” environments)

▸ July 2013: Nick “the Drupal guy” leaves

▸ July 2014: Ross “the other Drupal guy” leaves

A LITTLE HISTORY…

2009 2012 2013 2014#highedweb16 #mpd8

- Web hosting cPanel interface means one-click installs of popular software: Drupal, WordPress, and others- WordPress services in July; Hosted Drupal in the spring of that year

ADD REQUISITE 3 MONTHS…

…to re-write position, get it through HR, complete interviews and get someone approved for hire.

OCTOBER 2014▸HighEd Web Portland & Leadership Academy

▸Perspectives on Leadership

▸Being More Strategic

▸Governance Planning

▸What’s next for you?

▸Here’s Brian!

▸Two WordPress people, OMG!

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Other lessons: 1. Office politics2. Everyone has more staff than you doAlso learned a lot about the differences in Marketing Web shop vs. IT-based web shops.

AND IT WAS GOOD

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Amazing.Joy throughout the land. The crowd goes wild.Consistency. Redundancy. Collaboration.But of course, you always want more…

FALL 2014▸More work coming in all the time

▸Moving Drupal users to WordPress

▸New clients, including DASA (60+ sites)

▸New campus brand released

▸New OIT website

#highedweb16 #mpd8

Lots of work; > new clients; moving people from Drupal to WordPress.40% increase in income. More work than we can handle. Need more people.

HOW DO WE GROW?We have the clients.

There’s a need for our services.

How do we get positions in an era of hiring freezes and budget cuts?

#highedweb16 #mpd8

How many of you have this problem?3 things that worked for us to get staff.

1. INTERNS

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- Had one part-time student position available but tough to transition when new staff came in.- Spring of 2015, partially in response to us making noise about needing help, mandate from CIO to assist IT Club asking for an intern program.- TOUCHY SUBJECT. Interns are not the same as staff. Source of frustration that this was seen as a “solution” for us when really it’s more overhead & more work.

2. LEVERAGE

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Example: Web team lead gets a job offer at a competing institution to run their WordPress shop.I stayed, and was able to use this to finally convince my unit that we needed another position. Got 3/4 of a FTE/position. So…

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3. PARTNERSHIPSWhere to find another 1/4 of a FTE/position?

NEW POSITION▸ Joint position with Office of Research, Innovation &

Economic Development

▸“Lives” in our unit and reports to me

▸Primary on ORIED projects, but Design team shares support

▸Here’s Chris!

▸We have three people!

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- This was ideal for ORIED who have dozens of sites but their only web staff was a 3/4 FTE (with some outside vendor support). - Only costs them 1/4 FTE but gives them three more people.

9/2014 1 full-timer 9/2015 3 full-timers3-4 part-timers/interns

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THE PROCESSESPART TWO

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INTERNS

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First things first: have to “pay” for these interns. Part of responsibility with interns is to train them.

THE INTERN PROGRAM▸Unit 1 Topics (Fall)

▸ Introduction to the NC State Web and WordPress (Sept)

▸Communications and Customer Service

▸Branding

▸Security (Oct)

▸CyberSecurity Awareness Month

▸WordPress Security

▸Advanced WordPress Administration (Nov)

▸Unit 2 Topics (Spring)

▸Data Security (Jan)

▸Campus rules

▸Crisis and Change (Feb)

▸Communications

▸Project Management basics

▸Accessibility & Usability (March)

▸Documentation & Communications (April)

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- Has this always gone to plan? Oh, no way. But we have done training on most of these topics, had campus communications staff present, or trained one-on-one. Sticking to the schedule is a challenge.~50% of interns leave after one year- Year two: some stay and help train those incoming

TEAM BUILDING

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Concerns about bringing all these people together, training them, getting them used to working together

TEAM BUILDING: FRISBEE GOLF

TEAM BUILDING: BOWLING!

TEAM BUILDING: HOCKEY!

TEAM BUILDING: COWORKING

st3f4nflickrOFFICE HOURS

- Work in our own offices. Co-working is in one shared space. Good time for joint work efforts, mundane tasks- Co-working also with other campus developers. Concept we’ve had in place on campus for several years.- Added office hours to this time so clients can come ask questions in-person

▸Client information

▸Meeting notes

▸Project status updates

▸ Incoming help requests

▸Known issues

▸Awesome new ideas!

▸Personal schedules

SHARING IS CARING

#highedweb16 #mpd8

Two people can yell info at each other pretty quick. Three people (plus interns) exponentially increases need for interactions.

TOOLS: SLACK- The answer to our organizational needs. - Started using in March of 2015; paid version in Oct 2015, for integration and records retention.- Custom Integrations: WP theme/plugin updates, new sites created in MU, run commands on managed environments, LDAP campus directory lookup, forms that dump into Slack, etc.

TOOLS: SERVICE NOWNot everything goes into SN. Client emails still come to our own Google Group (also feeds into Slack).Working on creating with other SN integrations.

TOOLS: GITHUBWe use WP Github Updater plugin to push our updates to Github to our WordPress environments

TOOLS: GOOGLE DOCSGoogle campus. Notes in Google can be shared into Slack for record-keeping.

TOOLS: ASANAPrimarily used for PT-er projects.

TOOLS: WUNDERLISTCreate lists that match Slack channels. Use Stars to help “manage” daily to-do lists and export to Slack.

TOOLS: SLACKSo while we still use other tools - sadly still need email - Slack has become the home base for sharing and collecting info.

Can’t just improve processes by technology alone…

MEETINGS

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- 30-minute meetings. I hate 60-minute meetings. They are a self-fulfilling prophecy.- 1 OIT Design team meeting weekly; 1 Design/ORIED meeting

MEETING SPACE

Rearranged office. Always at least 4 chairs in there. Maximized wall space for on-going planning and info-sharing.

JUST SAY “NO” TO TECHNOLOGY

First rule of meetings: nobody talks about Fight Club. Second rule is no tech.Slinky is there because people like to have something to play with.

THE WHITEBOARD

- Post-its added during the week for items to discuss. Review “action items” and “ideas” each week. - “The Thing” is our monthly maintenance task: user, plugin, theme, security, analytics, accessibility reviews, and other maintenance items that arise (not doing a great job with this).

THE CLIENT BOARD

- Index cards for each client moved between “Upcoming”, “Current”, and “On-going/Maintenance”- Details on the back of the card: contacts, URLs, curiosities, etc.

DESIGNATED DISSENTER This is the person responsible for unconventional thinking. Pushing us to reconsider the obvious answers. Hard to do - we take turns.

THE PLANNINGPART THREE

#highedweb16 #mpd8

The requirement of leading a web team is that you always have to have the added joy of thinking about what’s next.

RETREATING- OCC Unit retreat: April; if you have the ability to coordinate with you parent unit I support that. We’re working on better communication and collaboration between our groups- Design retreat: August

RETREAT▸August, 2016

▸1/2 day; included Kim (ORIED) and David (PT-er)

▸Agenda

▸Myers-Briggs Test

▸Assessing the viability of our goals

▸Specific Fall 2016 semester goals

▸Evaluating our tools

#highedweb16 #mpd8

N (INTUITION) S (SENSING)I solve problems by working through facts until I understand the problem.

I am pragmatic and look to the "bottom line."

I start with facts and then form a big picture.

Sometimes I pay so much attention to facts, either present or past, that I miss new possibilities.

I solve problems by leaping between different ideas and possibilities.

I am interested in doing things that are new and different.

I like to see the big picture, then to find out the facts.

Sometimes I think so much about new possibilities that I never look at how to make them a reality.

#highedweb16 #mpd8

It’s notable that we are ALL ‘N’s. This may account for some of our failures to do proper assessment, and our tendencies to jump into projects with both feet. We’re dreamers. Every staff meeting we come up with another big idea.None of us are ’S’ (sensing) so we need to make an extra effort to be more detail-oriented.

1.) IMPROVE SOME OF OUR HABITS2.) WORK MORE/BETTER WITH OCC UNITS 3.) DEVELOP NEW CAMPUS PARTNERSHIPS

4.) DEVELOP NEW TRAINING FOR CAMPUS

5.) CONTRIBUTE TO THE WORDPRESS COMMUNITY

GOALS

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Other WordPress units, especially Outreach Technology (web applications and mobile development)

GOALS: NEW TRAINING

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- New classes for campus, built in part from our intern training: WP Security, Web Content Strategies- Dedicated training environment in development

GOALS: GROW THE COMMUNITY

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- Lots of NC State developers. Continue to build and educate the web developer community, keep co-working running- Encourage on-campus leaders/trainers - Contribute beyond campus: WordCamp Raleigh and WP Campus

GROW THE COMMUNITY

https://wpcampus.org

#wpcampus

@wpcampusorg

#highedweb16 #mpd8

Check out the podcast!

Major Campus Multisites

Unit-level Multisites

Stand-aloneSingle Installs + Small Multisites

OIT

ORIED

DASA

OFA

HR

Free “Blogs” Environment

Premium “Hosted” Environment

Rest of campus…?

GOALS: NEW PARTNERSHIPS

- Who else can we help? How can we continue to streamline campus web needs? - Maybe we won’t get another position out of this but perhaps part of a position?- Working more with the rest of OIT (people within even our own unit doing “their own thing” on the web)

GOALS: BIG PICTURE st3f4nflickr

Improve habits. Get the “little” things done.#yearofdocumentation#yearofassessment

REMEMBER CHRIS?

YEAH, HE LEFT.#highedweb16 #mpd8

He’s dead to us.Just when you think you’re on a roll and ready to present on your success at a major conference… there are always challenges.

BACK TO TEAM BUILDING

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In the process of hiring someone new (interviews at 9am Thursday morning). Will have to work them into the team - this time into a team that already exists, with processes already in place.

GOALS: WORK WITH OCC UNITS

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- Chris moved to OCC Outreach Technology… NOT dead to us!- Actually makes some of our goals easier. We have an ally in that group who knows WordPress and how we work.

SUMMING UP…

1. Positions

2. Processes

3. Planningoffice politics

office politics

office politics

human resourcestraining

campus policies

communication

management responsibilities

time-management

managing expectations

crises

turnover

project management

orientation

deadlines

requirements-gathering

funding sourcesbudgets

new technologies

new services

relationships

employee schedules

priorities

destroying dreams

the unexpected

scope creepjustifying stuff

#highedweb16 #mpd8

- You need these things to be able to build a successful web team.- Am I over-simplifying? Oh HELLLLL YEAH. - Are these three words alliterative and therefore hopefully catchy? YOU BET.- These are the things that were critical to get US through the first year. But they’re the tip of the iceberg. - And your experience may vary. WILL vary.

THIS IS MY STORY…

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WHAT’S YOURS?- It’s not all pretty. I don’t love how some of it went down. But I’m very proud of what I’ve been able to accomplish for my campus and I’m going to keep working on it because I think we’re a huge asset to campus.- I hope each of you got something out of this that will help you develop your web teams.

BIG THANK YOUS!

St3f4n (aka DocChewbacca)https://www.flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/

My Team(<3)

#highedweb16 #mpd8

St3f4n (aka DocChewbacca)https://www.flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/ My Team

QUESTIONS?Jen McFarland, @ncsumarit

#highedweb16 #mpd8

OIT Design: https://design.oit.ncsu.edu Github: https://github.ncsu.edu/oitdesign WP Campus: https://wpcampus.org/ Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/ncsumarit/

OIT Design: https://design.oit.ncsu.edu Github: https://github.ncsu.edu/oitdesign WP Campus: https://wpcampus.org/ Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/ncsumarit/