[W]e weren’t prepared for how much work it would take, and as our web design team moved steadily closer to launch our migration initiative fell behind.
Yesterday, Idealware launched their new website. To promote it, they sent out a newsletter with some great lessons learned from the migration. I wanted to link to it, though, so now you can read the full blog post!
@MRWweb We decided we might as well just put it on our blog. Here the link: https://t.co/T5JBrw2OHi
— idealware (@idealware) September 21, 2016
If I’m being honest, what I liked most about this was that it rang so true with my own experiences. But Idealware also did a fantastic job —deserving kudos—of summarizing the issues and humanizing them with real quotes from their staff following a stale-donut-powered website conversion binge.
“Allow yourself a lot more time than you think you will need, because you’ll discover things you didn’t plan for.”
Truer words have never been spoken!
“Think twice before assigning tasks to volunteers.”
That was the topic of a presentation I went to yesterday! You can read the notes on “Decoding Technology Volunteerism” on Nonprofit WP.
“Make it possible for this to take priority.”
It is so crucial that people working on web projects are given the time and space by their coworkers to focus on the job. It’s not easy!
And they closed it out with why I like Idealware a lot in the first place:
We put a lot of work into our research, but part of what makes it so valuable is the fact that we’re a nonprofit, too, subject to similar issues and limitations as the organizations who rely on us. Sometimes it’s good to be reminded of that—even when it happens the hard way.
I’m not sure there’s a better way to learn than the hard way.
Read “Lessons Learned From Our Website Content Migration” from Idealware.