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Warding off evil web projects

Written by James Robertson, published January 13, 2009

Categorised under: Intranets

Peter Erik Bang Nissen talks about warding off evil web projects. To quote:

An “evil project” is a project that results in web features which are of benefit neither to the organisation, nor to the web site visitors. The purpose of such a project is merely to promote a specific business unit, department or manager within the organisation. The web team is put under pressure to promote the project from a prominent place on the front page – often by the department manager (who happens to play tennis, football or golf every week with a VP in the organisation…).

While I agree with the problems outlined in this piece, I strongly recommend finding a different perspective. Calling some projects “evil” can lead to calling the project owners “stupid” (or even evil). This isn’t helpful, and it reinforces a common “us and them” conflict that exists in many web teams.

At the end of the day, business areas are doing what they think is best to meet a real (or perceived) need. They may not be very informed about web best practices, but they are setting out with good intentions. It’s our job to understand where they are coming from, and to find better ways of delivering their requirements.

And yes, we do need to fight some battles, and this is how I recommend winning them.

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2 Comments:

  1. Brian F commented on January 14th, 2009

    Your positivity is a great personal quality but there are evil projects and, as Nissen hints, they’re when a manager’s personal goals and the organisation’s goals are not the same. In my experience, the most common conflict is between a manager’s desire to Be Seen To Be Doing Something and the overall goal of Doing What We Do Better, with a lot of time and money wasted spinning your wheels while the core business suffers neglect.

  2. James Robertson commented on January 15th, 2009

    Hi Brian, not disagreeing at all! I live in the real world too. :-)

    The danger I’m more concerned with, however, is “burnt out” intranet teams who feel like they are “fighting” the organisation. Once things get to that point, nothing good can happen…