“Run meetings as facilitated work sessions, not as presentations of conclusions”

I think that this is an emerging theme in this book – working with the client, not just throwing ideas over the wall. Some where the book even went into good ways to hold brainstorming sessions. This information was probably the best guide I have ever seem written on how to hold these sessions. But the big word for this book seems to be COMMUNICATE.

I also like how the author goes into turning a solution into a complete, sustainable system. I just finished up a web design project for a company a few months ago that just did not understand this distinction. A web site is like creating a poster – you finish it and it works forever. Except, they had a dynamic website that functions more like a desktop program than a digital poster. Once the “poster” looked good, they were done with me. I looked back at the site this week and it’s not working – I could tell by the error that was coming up that someone changed a critical part of the database. Oh, well. Their choice. I tried to get them to look into operational policies and procedures, support and maintenance services, documentation, and security – but they weren’t interested.