Moving your creative agency to product development is often an overwhelming challenge. Here's are some great tactics and methods to help transition to a product development mindset.

1. So Your Agency Wants to
Be Product Developers

2. Appoint a Mentor
A senior role, experienced in product development, established to help the
team stay on track and address any questions or issues around process and
planning.

3. Organize Your Teams
Management Team
Interface Team
Integration Team
System Team

4. The Management Team
Creative Lead
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Creative Approval
Creative Effort Estimation
Responsible for Product Design, UX and
Content Team
Client facing
Technology Lead
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Technology Approval
Technology Effort Estimation
Responsible for Product Development and QA
Client facing
Product Manager
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Product Delivery
Product Scope / Planning
Product Schedule
Sprint Planning
Task Assignment and Management
Team Velocity Estimation
Gives Direction to Client Services
Client facing
Client Support
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Client Point of Contact
Client Engagement
Client Approval Support

5. The Interface Team
UX Lead
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Layout, functionality wireframes
Site map, User flow creation
Behavioral/functional specification
System scaling recommendation
Interface Development Lead
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Interface Architecture
Prototype development
Production development
Gives direction to Interface development Support
Interface task creation
Design Lead
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Layout Design
Prototype Design
Production Design
Site Asset Cutting
Site Asset Inventory
Asset Compression
QA Lead
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QA point of contact
Manages QA support Staff
Content Lead
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Manages content creation, AV / Writing
Manage delivered asset inventory

6. The Integration Team
Integration Development
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Interface and system development, as needed
Data integration vetting and planning
Behavioral/functional specification documentation
Integration Development Support
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Support Integration Development, as needed

7. The System Team
System Development
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Github Management
Deployment Management
System Architecture
System Development Support
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Support System Development

8. Working Methodology
Iterative Progress, with clearly defined milestones.
The team is Empowered and Responsible for working towards pre-determined
milestones for iterative product delivery.

9. The Iterative Process
Sketch
Prototype
Test
Design

10. The Importance of Colocation
Core team members should be seated next to or near each other, to improve
communication and collaborative problem solving. This builds cross-disciplinary
understanding, often eliminating problems before they happen.

11. Recommended Project Tools
Document Management / Approval Management
Planning / Task Management
Application Management

12. Plan Out Your Milestones

13. What A Milestone Plan Should Look Like
[Feb
[Mar
[Apr
[May
[Jun
[Jul
15]
15]
15]
15]
15]
15]
: Planning
: Framework Review
: Module Template Review
: MVP System Review
: Beta Launch
: Enhancements

14. Plan Out Your Budget

15. A Formula for Smart Budget Planning
A = Allocation of resource [e.g. 1.0, 0.5]
B = Resource’s Rate [e.g. 180.00, 120.00]
C = Number of Days in Project
Project Estimate = Sum of All Resources ( A * ( B * C ) )

16. Thanks.
Hit me up with any questions @eddiestover