Comments on: Nothing is more important than business objectives

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 15:09:00 +0000

We tend to work with stakeholder interviews. Out of these we draw up our own list of business objectives. Having something to respond to often helps to focus their minds. People are normally very good at saying what they don't want to do rather than what they do want to do :)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 15:09:00 +0000

By: Rick Cusick

Rick Cusick — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 19:25:00 +0000

You're right, absolutely. I've literally said these exact words, and seeing them here is nice validation. Would love to hear your thoughts on engaging ways to draw out the business goals from a group of people who may be on somewhat different wavelengths. I've seen stakeholder interviews, sticky affinity exercises, top-down decision-making, and consensus building workshops, all with varying degrees of success. I also find that making the business goals an 'input' to another process (e.g. persona development) helps drive attention back to this point. What's worked for you in getting at these, when they're not as clear as you would like?

By: Rick Cusick

Rick Cusick — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 19:25:00 +0000

By: Bob Reid

Bob Reid — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 16:04:27 +0000

We have a saying in our shop: “all projects are business projects, not technology projects.” There are many times when I would like to believe otherwise, but it’s true, even when we know best, provide all the answers, and keep projects on track. Without a business case there would be no business need for what we do.

By: Martin

Martin — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 14:22:33 +0000

I totally agree with you, we must sacrifice the user experience to achieve our goals, if that's necessary.

By: Andrew J. Holden

Andrew J. Holden — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:04:23 +0000

I agree – business objectives come first. Web Developers have a critical influence in discovering new customers and helping companies to grow. However, I believe we should be using our technological and marketing sophistication to assist only ‘good’ organizations and technologies – discussion of human and environmental ethics are far too rare in our industry’s internal conversation.

By: carlmagnus

carlmagnus — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:02:26 +0000

Great post!
User experience has arrived and it soaks up all the atention right now. If ppl remember Owyang’s three spheres of web strategy http://bit.ly/3j7uTH , Business was one of the spheres.

By: johnegraham2

johnegraham2 — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 17:15:46 +0000

Great perspective! You could actually make "Business Objectives" the base for the pyramid in the Web Design Hierarchy of Needs that Smashing Magazine wrote about back in April.

By: Benjamin @ Virtuosi Media

Benjamin @ Virtuosi Media — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 15:47:20 +0000

I quite agree, Paul, and kudos to you for the post. I'd go even further and say that the business objectives, primarily revenue, are the only real objective measures of a site's success. You can say, "We just made it to the front page of Digg!" That's great, but how much revenue or future business did that bring in? We should be constantly measuring our business metrics and trying to improve them. Otherwise, a website is likely to fail.