“An open source approach to establishing standards and practices in digital production” is the tagline for Stndrd_. A bold and commendable move but one that starts out with an incomprehensible and hard to remember name.
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.
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I am, for want of a better word, a web developer. Practising since '96 and
focused on front and back-end work with a slant for optimisation.
I love music, art, and helping people, traits which I hope are borne out here.
Read more about me and this blog on the 
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