Families Moving Forward

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Team IB takes top honors at inaugural Overnight Website Challenge

Web developers didn’t know which non-profits they would work with until an hour before beginning their 24-hour project. Team IB overcame this by advance game planning for all selected non-profits.

“We all work together at Internet Broadcasting — and will even continue to work together — after our experience,” said Team IB captain Susan Inglis. “We met over lunch every Wednesday for six weeks to develop ideas for helping all 11 non-profits.”

Nonprofit profile

Founded in 1991, Families Moving Forward is a grassroots social service agency providing emergency shelter, affordable housing and supportive services to homeless and low-income families with children. Their goal is to help families build a solid foundation so that they can obtain and maintain self-sufficiency in their own housing.

Objectives

The nonprofit considered their current site to be “old, too cluttered, and not user friendly.” New website wish list: a site that positions them as a leader on homeless issues and makes a clear and compelling message about the issue of family homelessness and its affects on kids; give volunteers access to secured documents in a clearly organized member-only section that helps them find resources to help families; ability to post and share videos.

“We are, in a word, ecstatic,” said Leslie Frost, Families Moving Forward’s executive director. “We got so much more than we expected — functionality, content, and coolness. We’re trying to add a little ‘hip’ without scaring off older volunteers while attracting new ones. And now, when people search online for family homelessness, we’ll pop up first rather than never.”

At the end of the long day and night and following morning, the judges talked to members of each team, assessed their work and scored each site. Top honors went to Team IB and Families Moving Forward, and then everyone went home and to bed. We later caught up with Team IB captain Susan Inglis for a Q&A session:

Q: What possessed you to want to give up a weekend as a volunteer? A: Two reasons: One, it seemed like it would be fun and the non-profit aspect made me feel good about myself. Two, it gave me an opportunity to manage a rapid-fire project with all kinds of crazy unknowns all on my own — without corporate or business constraints. It tested my agile training.

Q: How did your team come together? A: Ken Earley sent a note to our company tech group and received a less than mild response — everyone was too busy to pay attention. Ken then talked to specific individuals he’d worked with before and assembled the team.

Q: How were objectives defined and prioritized, and how were expectations managed? A: We manage projects in the Agile Method — this process incorporates all the team members (including the client) into all facets of the project which allows for better managed expectations, clearly defined objectives, tasks, priorities and success measurements. It’s the only way to manage a project.

Q; What was so wrong with their old website? A: The old site didn’t have some of the features the client wanted — secure pages, survey, blogging, a content management system they can update on their own. Also, the old site design was dated and the nature of the content was not properly exemplified by proper imagery.

Q: What was your team’s greatest challenge and how did you overcome it? A: Lack of sleep — this made some folks unfocused, temperamental and less productive. Specifically, we had one person who we all consider to be our most skilled (brilliant, actually) developer — he was almost completely incapacitated by the lack of sleep.

How did we overcome? Agile. Essentially, everyone on our team worships at the Agile alter. If you have that kind of universal agreement, and a rock star Project Manager (yeah, that’s me) then you’re cool. We had the lack of sleep issue listed as a project roadblock/obstacle in our iteration planning so we dealt with it before it happened.

Q: What can this nonprofit now do that it couldn’t do before? How does the new site help them work smarter online? A: Simple answer — the old site didn’t work for them online at all and the new one does. New features/design elements include:

Q: Was there anything the client did not expect, but got as a pleasant surprise? If so, how specifically did your team exceed expectations? A: A few things:

Q: What did your team do to stay productive and keep going in the wee hours? A: As far as I know all we did was drink lots of coffee, Red Bull and water. Although, some of the guys felt the midnight Tai-Chi performance woke them up a bit, too.

Q: Looking back, what’s the main thing you take away from your experience, on either a personal or professional level (or both)? A: For me, it gave me a real self-confidence boost. At the time of the event, my company was in the middle of a HUGE upheaval in leadership… everything was up in the air. The win put me in front of our new leaders in a very positive way. It showed them my level of energy, commitment to a goal and overall abilities. I’ve since been promoted, given a raise and have a solid relationship with those leaders. Personally, it was a crazy load of fun and I felt good about helping a non-profit get a nice new website.

Sierra Bravo later also caught up with Leslie Frost, Executive Director of Families Moving Forward; here is a portion of that interview:

Q: What led you to apply? What was so wrong with your old website? A: Our site was clunky and unprofessional, and not pretty. It was hard to work with and make updates.

Q: What is better about your new website? How does it advance your mission? A: It is pretty! The response to its look and feel has been great. We have put new stuff on the site several times. Our mission is advanced if folks are impressed with the site, find it useful and spend a little time on it.

Q: Describe what it was like meeting your team for the first time — how did the first hour go? A: Team IB was great — right from the start, very organized, very professional. The first hour was a whirl. We had to let go and just put ourselves in their hands. As soon as we did that we went rolling on very rapidly.

Q: Describe the collaboration process/teamwork of spending a continuous 24 hours working together. A: The energy was good. Susan Inglis, leader of Team IB, did a great job of managing the available resources.

Q: How has your new site measurably affected your business? A: The good impression the site creates has been great for us — we get many compliments. The Contact Us forms have worked very well — we have had new volunteers use them, as well as other community members. The event “blocks” have been very effective for us.

Q: Was there anything you did not expect, but got as a pleasant surprise? If so, how specifically did your team exceed expectations? A: We really got much more done than we expected during the 24 hours. Their design folks were wonderful and did more with the little info they asked for than we could have ever imagined. They also taught us a method for working that has stayed in my mind ever since.

Q: If you hadn’t been selected, what could you realistically have done on your own to improve your website? A: Very little. We had already tried using all the resources that we knew about.

Q: When you decided to go for this, did people think you were nuts? A: No! Our board, volunteers and community partners got right in there and helped us with terrific endorsements.

Q: What kind of post-F1 feedback are you getting from staff, board, volunteers, and people served by your organization? A: Everyone is very grateful and very pleased.

Q: What advice would you have for future non-profits applying? A: Get ready for some real work. There is significant prep beforehand and lots of work afterwards as well.

Q: How did you hear about the F1 Challenge? A: Tracey heard about it on MPR, John Gordon’s show.

Q: How can Sierra Bravo improve the Overnight Website Challenge? A: We believe you must figure out how to get the sites closer to launch before the event ends. The punch of the media interest was lost when it took so long to get the sites up. The follow up by the teams could be improved. Both the tech and nonprofit team went back to work on Monday and promptly lost focus. When we were ready to get together, they were not, and vice versa.

Further suggestions:

Create the calendar so that the nonprofits have more time between the pre-event “get-to-know-you” mixer and event weekend — add a week in there.

Allow each tech team and each nonprofit team to have one member who is allowed to go home to sleep after midnight and arrive back at 8 a.m. on Sunday to bring some fresh eyes and bright spirits into the room. In addition, set aside a quiet part of the building for those who do want to sleep.

Get judging to move more quickly. It was really hard to spend so much time waiting after such an investment of time already. Also, give the nonprofit teams some additional heads up about what the judges will be asking.

Lastly, invite me to come next time to be a cheerleader! I can’t stay up all night, but I can be enthusiastic on Saturday at midnight and again on Sunday morning at 8 a.m.

Q: Please say something about how cool Sierra Bravo is. A: You are all very cool indeed! You are wonderful to think of this and wonderful to push it through and gather up terrific resources to get it done. We were, and still are, amazed at the prep work that you did and the wonderful way that the event came off.