His take is that strident relationships in a company produce creativity, they bring that edge and dynamism that a team needs if people are, not quite at each others’ throat, but know where to draw the line and stop at fulfilling their work role, as producer, developer, or office hard man, which in itself doesn’t make for good friendships.  And perhaps he is right, but office relationships are realistically more nuanced than either he or I portray them.

In his book “It’s Not How Good You Are …” Paul Arden talks about mediocrity and about creativity in the context of ideas and the ad industry.  His take is one that describes the office as a place for the interchange of ideas, and the continual drive to seek out higher thought and better standards.  His picture is one of the battle of minds, rather than of personal relationships, and one that doesn’t predicate fractious inter-play or tense relationship.  Professional relationships do not  preclude personal friendships.

I’ve talked before about the Soup Metric, one of Tara Hunt’s devices to determine your real friendships in the realm of social media.  It’s a rather blunt tool, but it is one that proves a clear point and perhaps reflects that my rather blunt indicator, the so-called “Relationship Score”, could be equally indicative of the base social glue within your team.  Whether it is love or hate, that you desire amongst your employees, is another matter, but it is an indicator nonetheless.

The nice thing about the “Relationship Score”, in my unbiased opinion, is that irrespective of the nature of relationships within office, it glides swiftly over them.  A publicly fractious relationship doesn’t necessarily mean an unproductive one, whilst at the same time not necessarily reflecting a lack of friendship either.  It would be a mistake to assume that professionally tense relationships, whether good or bad for the company (you decide on a per case basis), cannot foster respect and friendships.

If anything, in its current state, the “Relationship Score” is a little too blunt and needs to be sharpened up to factor in the weighting of professional relationships and other dynamics in the company in questions, such as the desired levels of inter-play between individuals.  It’s of course one thing to operate like the army, it’s another to run the show like factory.

Having grown up with a father who has been self-employed since 1978, and between 1984-96 pretty much ran a full-time office from home with anything upto 10-15 employees in tow, I find it intriguing to watch, analyse and understand office relationships or “politics” for want of a better word.  During my own career in web development I have found it interesting to see how even the slightest details can cause seismic changes in the way people interact, and understanding these can be the key to making your company a success over a competitor, not just your strategy online.

Ultimately any office relationships, be they on a professional or a personal level need to result in growth.  Not just for the company but on a person-to-person level.  Being able to tick the industry boxes and garner the silverware for your trophy cabinet is one thing, but perhaps more importantly, making sure the dynamic works within your team is critical for a desired success.

Here are a few guides and tips for making the project as seamless as possible for you, your development team and your raft of translators and proof-readers:

• Locale -The BIGGEST point of confusion, even on a small development team can be choosing your locale format.  Locales are an ISO standard but everybody seems to have their own format whether country first and then language or vice versa, whether with hyphens or underscores, or even varying capitalisation.  Simply choose one, then stick to it.
• Character Encoding – Make sure that you are using UTF-8 or UTF-16 encoding type so that your documents can handle all of the required characters for your languages.  The same will be required in your database and you will want to make sure your PHP, or other code, is set up to handle the right encoding so that you don’t jumble the text as you process it.
• Use Standards – Rather than re-inventing the wheel, use an XML translation standard such as TMX, this means that you can use the same files across the board, whether in Flash, PHP, JS or even in the translation and proofing software.  Seamless integration goes a long way.
• Correct Assets – When working with fonts in Flash or using JS font replacement, you need to ensure that the fonts you are using include the right character sets.  Fonts with both eastern and eastern character sets will obviously be MUCH larger in size.
• Use Foreign Text Early – It’s super easy to develop a design that looks absolutely incredible in one language and hits the nail on the head, but taking that design and making it fluid enough to work with multiple languages is much harder, therefore take the opportunity to introduce foreign language into the design mix as soon as possible.
• Translation Logic – Languages like Polish can have multiple versions of words for plurals dependent upon the number of items in the plural clause, therefore you will need to code with these things in mind, and bare it in mind when developing the design.  Fluid options are a must, and try to avoid making your translators write code, however simple it might seem to you.
• Connecting Content - In the design integrate a language selector, don’t use a language selector as a home/splash page.  Also add META tags that alert Google and other search engine bots to the existence of alternate language copies of the page.
• HTML Code – On top of connecting your content you will want to make sure that all the elements of the page that refer to a locale or language are optimised for that language from the head to the body.
• Multiple Domains - A correct domain, combined with a proper language set up will ensure the right kind of visibility for your site in those foreign language search engines, therefore multiple local domains are the way to go for those interested in SEO-friendly multi-lingual setups.
• Localised Images - To avoid the need for photoshop jobs down the road, and to maximise the benefit of SEO, place as MUCH text as possible in the HTML, and not into images.  CSS can be loaded on a per locale basis, but having to do this saves time and increases site speed.

So there you have it.  A few tips on making life easier for your entire dev, design and translation team.  I hope you find them useful, and feel free to add your 2¢ below.

Why is this important? Well besides user-experience, and how people hate slow sites, it is also considered a factor in search engine ranking for sites, so here is my guide to optimisation:

Tools – Visualising Slowness

Use Y-Slow & Firebug: these 2 browser plug-ins are a great way to figure out why your site is so slow.  Firebug has a net panel which shows you all the files downloaded for a page to load, the request times for them and the time it took to download them.  These are obviously key pointers when the site doesn’t necessarily appear until a range of files are downloaded and in place.

Above and beyond these in browser plug-in you will want to consider using web site monitoring services that provide you with real-time charts and long-term analysis of your web sites performance from multiple locations around the world.  Just because something is fast for you doesn’t mean the same will be the case for users everywhere!

Reduce File Requests

Reducing the number and size of requests, i.e. to pack as much JS and CSS into single files, and to optimise and minify the code is also a good idea to help improve speed of requests to load a page. Once the file has been downloaded the first time, the file will be cached int he end users browser, but there is always the initial hit.

To this end, there are hosted libraries on Google APIs which are being used across a lot of sites, to this end, you can potentially save yourself a request or two for these files by using these shared, remotely hosted files.  Moreover, even if the files are not already cached in the site visitor’s browser, the fact the file comes from a remote host means that it will be downloaded concurrently, alongside other files from your servers, and help speed up the load time.

On the flip side, if any specific host is taking ages to respond to requests, you need to identify this and remove it from the mix as quickly as possible.  On a high traffic site this could mean affecting hundred or thousands of visitors, though even on a single site with low volume traffic, it’s not nice to push your visitors away with blank browser windows for seconds and seconds.

Lazy Loading & Optimised Images

Lazy loading uses the idea that you do not load content into the page until the site visitor is ready to see it.  Imagine a collection page with 250 images in the gallery and then trying to load them all in at once, despite the visitor only seeing 10 at a time. Why load in 3MB of data when you can load in 200KB for example.  It’s doesn’t make sense, therefore use JS to load them in “on paging” as the gallery scrolls, or load the page and then load the images in via the background with JS.

On top of lazy loading you might want to consider optimising your images, not just by compressing them to a minimum without loss of recognisable quality but also by using sprites for common web site assets such as logos and buttons.  Sprites are where you place multiple image assets on a single canvas and then use background position in CSS to display the required asset in the HTML element.  A single image load is much fast er than 2-3-4-5-6 and so on.

Multiple Hosts & Fast Static Servers

Even if going to the same directories on the server, it is worth setting up multiple hostnames for example www.domain.com & assets.domain.com to allow some of the content to be downloaded from one and other content to be downloaded from the other concurrently.

In addition to these multiple hosts you will want to ensure that any static content, such as image assets, JS and CSS comes from the FAST source.  Given that ZERO evaluation needs to be processed before sending the request optimising that side of the equation is key to getting MASSES of images out via the network ASAP.  Pushing content to a content distribution system helps with this.

Caching Through The Nose

When your site is being pummeled by requests and the database is being overloaded you need to cache as much content as possible.  To this end you can run a data caching layer in the form of Memcached and you can use HTML caching such as Squid.  It’s all about the reduction of processor time to get the content “out the door” and over to your clients.  This kind of best practice is useful when you are working with heavy data-sets and web services, such as those used for open APIs at museums.

Analyse Your Configuration, Code, SQL & Data

Analysing your logic, queries and data at every stage of the serving process is important to removing bottlenecks.  Making sure your database search queries are optimised with indexes and that your php logic (or whichever language you use) isn’t sucking up unnecessary processor time or sucking up tooo much memory is important.  Write, re-factor, and then re-factor again.  There are always ways to streamline and bring your code and queries down to the lowest common denominator.  Whilst using services like memcached you will want to ensure that every second page load will reduce the number of database calls down to zero.

Above and beyond these things you will also want to look at your base setup.  I know for one that the default config of Apache isn’t optimal for serving up some heavy duty sites, especially when you live in a world of heavy downloading, so the connections remain open persistently for long periods of time.  Therefore you need to look at the config, make sure the available RAM is enough and that the number of child server instances is enough etcetera.

Hosting & Your Target Audience

Making sure that your site is hosted near its target audience is important.  A site hosted in the UK will provide SLOW load times to the Japanese marketplace compared to a site hosted in Asia.  This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to run an entire copy of your in each market place but you can optimise the process by providing content distribution networks that help transfer the content to the site visitor from the nearest possible location.  To this end, static content such as images, CSS and JS can be loaded via CDN and any uncached content, such as that from the database, can be loaded up from your primary location.

Shared vs Dedicated vs Cloud

When hosting a highly trafficked site, you will want to ensure your content is being served under optimal conditions, and if you are running the site of a shared environment which is being hammered, you are not going to get the best load times.  Shared hosting might be cheap but you also get what you pay for.  And just because you are “on the cloud” doesn’t mean you are doing much better.  Personal experience of Mosso Cloud and other Cloud services recently tells me that there is still benefit in being in charge of your own dedicated server, managed or not.

One thing is for sure, when operating a site with multiple heavy duty functions, for example popular forums and a popular download e-commerce site, you will want to decouple the functions, and run the 2 different sections of the site from 2 different machines.  Not only does it mean that one service impinges on the other, but overall the two can live in better harmony and users can enjoy a better browsing experience.

Manage Updates – Scheduled vs Real-time

From a more human and less technical perspective,  when site visitors know there will be an update at a specific time on a certain day, and they are actively interested in that, i.e. at Last.fm when the charts were being updated once a week, site users will visit and the site will get hammered with obvious regularity once a week.  To avoid this using real-time updates or an irregular schedule is a way to avoid this. Every action has a repercussion, and when you send out an email to 50,000 recipients all in one go you can also assume they are all going to hit the site at once.  Thinking before you do things is another way to avoid site overload and inevitable slowness for your users.

And All This, Why?

So much effort for so little it might seem, but we have to remember why we are doing this.  Website performance is about good user experience, and visitors will not sit around on a slow web site, especially when there are thousands of other alternatives.  Would you ever shut the door in the face of potential customers interested parties? If not then why bother serving up slow content and service?

I ask the question because yesterday I and a previous work colleague, who happens to have just started working with on the team with me again at Stink Digital, PASSED another ex-colleague in the street.  All the more odd because we had been talking about how little we had bumped into EX’s despite plenty being in the vicinity of work or home.

Anyhow, in the process of my thoughts this morning, it occurred to me:  “How many of your employees would likely stay in touch if they all split company today?”

Sure we have Facebook and the like which makes it super easy to stay in touch, but does that really mean they would stay properly in touch or just leave them in the back of the mind on some deserted friends list or limited profile?

The fact that I have stayed in touch with my good friend Zen, a spiffy flash developer, and encouraged him to start working for Stink Digital proves that the friendship is more than merely superficial, which I can’t say for all my ex-colleagues that I am connected to on Facebook.

So on that basis, wouldn’t the question: “How many current work colleagues would you stay in touch with if you left the company tomorrow?” acts as a pretty simple, quick and easy to take straw poll as a gauge of the state of personal relationships within your company.

Let’s take an average as a percentage of your company’s workforce and what does that tell you?  How much do you employees value each other?  Do they really like working together?  How much productivity are you actually getting out of them?  Can it be improved with better people skills?  All great questions which could be answered relatively well by your so-called “Relationship Score”.

((Retained Relationships / Workforce)*100) = Relationship Score

Interesting thought no? So let me ask you again: how well is your company actually doing?

Why do we need to establish standards and practices?  Well for the same reason that we need contracts to govern professional relationships, because it brings a structure and avoids any misunderstandings between production companies and their agency clients.  It also makes things quicker and easier.

You wouldn’t start a project without a contract and without an outline of the work to be accomplished.  So why not go a step further and pre-ordain any intention with an outline of the potential work so no stone can be left unturned in the aim to make sure all bases are covered.

Mid-Project Changes to Avoid

There’s nothing worse than being half way through a project and a client realising they didn’t think about something.  Who fault is that?  No ones’ but it cause a major headache, both in pain and money for the client, and in pain and disruption to the project flow for the production company.

What about every time you start a new project?  When you, as a production company, engage with a new client, that is effectively what most are doing, because of the mismatch of knowledge.  With Stndrd_’s memorandum of understanding, framework and new protocol for engagement, this takes a lot of the uncertainty out of that, as well as uncertainty going forward because both sides know that they have covered all bases and thought about every single aspect of the digital project.

The real boon for this is the quality of output.  With few changes in the pipeline, production companies can then do the best for their clients, and ultimately for the digital end users and customers.  Surely that’s the most important aspect of all these standards based approaches.

Teach & Learn

The real advantage of these documents and the standards based approach though is that producers will learn about the entire picture and think about it all the time.  Even in this day and age you would be amazed at the number of people who work in the “digital” field who know so little about it.  When digital production encompasses such a wide variety of areas from the web to iPhone apps to software at large for digital campaigns, you can no longer afford to know very little or a singular patch of digital territory.

Taking clients through the entire spectrum of possibility in discussing a project is a great way for you to discuss all the potential aspects, pitfalls and gains thereof, and share the wealth of information you have gained through years of digital production.

Integrating Stndrd_

These new documents, available openly and for free, are definitely worth reading, using and adjusting per your needs. Integrating them into any existing process of project costing and planning and engagement with clients is super simple, and if you haven’t already you should certainly consider it.

From my perspective I can see certain shortfalls in the content of the RFP and I am sure there are legal issues surrounding some of the content but, this is a great start and minor amends to the documents can be easily effected for your benefit, after which you can share them for the greater good!

You can find out more about Stndrd_ and download the documents from the stndrd.org web site.