slate blog

The Handoff is when we make projects in slate live to the world and let clients in to start managing their own sites. To put it bluntly, it’s something we’re bad at. Where we fail in providing a smooth handover of a site to a client is by not providing proper training and explanation of the system. We hold up slate as this answer to all of life’s ills and then say at the end “You’ll figure it out, it’s easy. Any questions just check Trac.”

It’s not like we drop clients cold-turkey but, by not providing a really good transition, we’ve just put up barrier to adoption of slate. In some cases a significant barrier. Yeah, a site is up in slate and it looks good but we want clients to manage them and update them. We want them to know how a site is being used and to take advantage of changes both in slate in particular but technology in general.

So how do we fix this? Over the next few months we’re going to be working on a process* to make life easier for clients working with us and slate.

• from the initial “We want a site. What can we do?” meeting,
• to comps,
• to content implementation,
• to go live kick-off,
• to follow-up meetings regarding new features.

We want to work out a process that not only keeps a client informed of their projects progress but makes sure that we launch with things like ‘Printable Version’ & Google Analytics working properly from our end. Where clients (and our staff) are aware of all the ins and outs of slate and how they can best use it to get their project completed. We want to be in a position where a client feels comfortable dropping us a note to ask a question, ask for a feature, or just give us feedback.

While process is great it only goes so far because, at some point, the client will go back to their own office to use slate. That’s where we’re going to have to provide more comprehensive docs. Our Getting Started Guide for SimpleForms has been fairly well received so we’ll be creating one for slate. There is a certain benefit to having a dead tree document on your desk as opposed to online documentation.

As slate grows up we have to reevalute how we do things. We’re reaching a broader client base with varying skills. Using “It’s a pilot” as an excuse won’t work anymore. The good news is that we realize this and we’re alreay working on it.

If you have feedback on how we can do a better job just drop us a line.

• – we do have a process in place for working with clients on sites. What we haven’t done is properly worked slate into the mix.