At its annual Block by Block conference, Notion announced a public certification program called Notion Certified, allowing any Notion enthusiast to verify their skills and join a growing group of Notion-certified users and consultants. The interest in this program has been overwhelming and Notion communities on Reddit, Facebook, and elsewhere have been clamoring to get their certified badges.

Given how new Notion Certified is, there is little shared about the certification process and what skill level makes a good candidate for certification. Here, I provide an in-depth review of what it means to be Notion certified, what you can expect from the application process, and key areas to study before taking the certification test.

What does being ‘Notion Certified’ mean?

Simply put, “Notion Certified is a program for Notion power users to validate their skills for clients and peers” (Notion). As Notion’s popularity has exploded over the last two years, independent consultants have created a niche marketplace for templates, paid training modules, sponsored content, and more. Becoming ‘Notion certified’ lets power users prove their Notion prowess and stand out from the quickly crowding field.

There are three different levels of Notion certifications:

1. Notion Essentials — This is the base certification meant to validate any power user’s knowledge and understanding of Notion. You’ll need to earn this certification before obtaining additional advanced certifications. You’ll receive a badge for some social cache along with a virtual ID to your official certification via Credly.
2. Notion Certified Consultant — There are fewer than 50 certified Notion consultants globally, a rarity in the Notion community; certified Notion consultants will often get featured by Notion and some have created lucrative consultant ventures. I share a few of my favorite consultants at the end of this article.
3. Notion Certified Admin — For users implementing and managing Notion within a company context, this certification is for you. Notion expects to release this certification in Summer 2022.

Which certification does this article cover?

This article takes a deep dive into the Notion Essentials certification process and exam. The Notion Essentials certification applies to most Notion users and is the first step to receiving more advanced Notion certifications.

Application & Certification Process

The certification process consists of two parts: an application and a timed exam.

STEP 1: APPLICATION

To be granted access to the official exam, you must first fill out a brief application showcasing your interest and relative skills in Notion. The application does have some long-form questions and asks you to submit work examples, so be prepared to submit a public link or screenshots of your best work. There is also space for you to share contributions you’ve made to the Notion community such as Reddit threads or Facebook groups (this is optional).

Notion provides a blank application template to draft your answers before submitting them on the official application.

STEP 2: EXAM

After your application has been received there is a 24–48hour waiting period for your application to be reviewed and accepted. Once accepted, you’ll be sent an email containing a unique link to the Notion Essentials exam.

• The exam consists of 60 multiple choice questions
• You have 90mins to complete the exam
• You must receive a 70% or better to pass (answering 42 out of 60 questions correctly)
• If you don’t pass the first time, there is a 30-day waiting period until you can retake the exam

Once you have passed the exam, you’ll be given an official badge. From there, you can share or embed your badge with your social networks. The Notion Essentials certification and badge do not expire.

Notion Essentials Exam Study Guide

Okay, now down to the good stuff: what is on this test? I was equally curious. Sixty questions and ninety minutes is way more than I expected. And, as someone who uses Notion every day, I expected this to be a walk in the park. I’m here to tell you that it wasn’t. I recommend brushing up on the categories below before sitting down and taking the test. I’ve rated each category by how well you should know the subject matter (“level of mastery”) and how frequently that subject matter appeared on the exam (“appearance rate”).

COMPOSING PAGES

Level of Mastery: ⭐ ⭐ // Appearance Rate: 🔍

My favorite features about Notion are to do with composing documents. Shockingly, this is not a huge focus of this exam. You’ll need to draw on basic skills for things like keyboard commands and back-linking, but not much else.

Before the exam, review:

• https://www.notion.so/help/keyboard-shortcuts
• https://www.notion.so/help/create-links-and-backlinks

PAGE ORGANIZATION & WORKSPACE STRUCTURE

Level of Mastery: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ // Appearance Rate: 🔍 🔍 🔍 🔍

If you’re using Notion within an organization and are used to workspaces and page hierarchy, you’ll have a leg up. There is a lot of attention devoted to how pages are shared and organized, as well as how you navigate to find those pages within your Notion experience.

Before the exam, review:

• https://www.notion.so/help/navigate-with-the-sidebar
• https://www.notion.so/help/collaborate-within-a-workspace
• https://www.notion.so/help/public-pages-and-web-publishing

SHARING & PERMISSIONS

Level of Mastery: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ // Appearance Rate: 🔍 🔍 🔍

Again, the topic of sharing and user permissions is most applicable to those that use Notion with other people in a collaborative way. If you’ve already been doing that for a while, you’ll likely be fairly familiar with managing permissions at a workspace and page level, as well as the best methods to share content with other people. You’ll also know a few best practices for controlling what gets edited and by whom.

Before the exam, review:

• https://www.notion.so/help/sharing-and-permissions
• https://www.notion.so/help/add-members-admins-guests-and-groups

SPREADSHEETS VS. DATABASES

Level of Mastery: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ // Appearance Rate: 🔍 🔍

You’ll want to have a solid understanding of the conceptual differences between Notion’s database block and a traditional spreadsheet (e.g., Excel). If you’re a regular Notion user, you know these differences in your bones, but it might be difficult to articulate. Make sure you know how to articulate it.

Before the exam, review:

• https://youtu.be/tjuYZK_U3PI?t=57
• https://zapier.com/blog/database-vs-spreadsheet/

FORMULAS

Level of Mastery: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ // Appearance Rate: 🔍

Formulas are scary, they just are. If you regularly use formulas in your databases, you’ll do fine on this exam. If that’s not you (I’m with you), take some time to review some formula 101 content.

Before the exam, review:

• https://www.notion.vip/formulas/
• https://www.notion.so/help/formulas

COMMENTS, MENTIONS, & NOTIFICATIONS

Level of Mastery: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ // Appearance Rate: 🔍 🔍

Though there are few questions about notifications in general, the questions that do appear on this topic assume you have a high degree of mastery of the subject. Even if you’re someone that uses Notion with different types of users regularly, you’ll want to give yourself a refresher on how commenting works, what @ mentioning can provide, and who will receive notifications given their relation to a page.

Before the exam, review:

• https://www.notion.so/help/notification-settings
• https://www.notion.so/help/comments-mentions-and-reminders

DATABASE PROPERTIES

Level of Mastery: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ // Appearance Rate: 🔍 🔍 🔍

Knowing the basics of the anatomy of a database is a given with this exam. You’ll also be expected to understand how linked databases work, how to group information (and by which properties), and how to filter and share database views. There’s also an emphasis on the relational table aspect of databases, so be comfortable with Relation and Rollup properties.

Before the exam, review:

• https://www.notion.so/help/intro-to-databases
• https://www.notion.so/help/data-sources-and-linked-databases
• https://www.notion.so/help/views-filters-and-sorts
• https://www.notion.so/help/relations-and-rollups

QUICK FIND SEARCH

Level of Mastery: ⭐ ⭐ // Appearance Rate: 🔍

I was surprised to see questions about Notion’s quick search function mainly because [whispers] I never use the search functions. Which got me thinking…maybe I should start. A quick refresher of this feature reminded me of how useful search is, especially when working on team-based plans.

Before the exam, review:

• https://www.notion.so/help/search-with-quick-find

ACCOUNT & WORKSPACE SETTINGS

Level of Mastery: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ // Appearance Rate: 🔍 🔍 🔍

Though less important than finding your way around pages, knowing your way around account and workspace settings is still valuable to know. You won’t have to be an admin to be able to answer the questions on the exam but you will need to remember where some settings live and how to change them.

Before the exam, review:

• https://www.notion.so/help/account-settings
• https://www.notion.so/help/workspace-settings
• https://www.notion.so/help/updates-and-notifications
• https://www.notion.so/pricing

Originally published at https://www.viget.com on July 7, 2022.

Your Notion Certified Study Guide Is Here was originally published in Inspire + Advance on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A project handoff is a make-or-break moment for clients. It sets the tone for future implementation and can define what type of relationship you and your client will have in the future. Have a negative project handoff and you may leave clients feeling uneasy or lost. Have a positive project handoff and they’ll be excited to take the reins and feel grateful for having you as a partner.

In this article, we’ll define some simple principles for creating a positive project handoff experience for both you and your client. We’ll go into:

• Making recommendations manageable and aligned with your client team’s capabilities
• Finding the right stakeholders to foster shared ownership with
• Embracing over-delivery of documentation to keep expectations clearly communicated

Make it manageable

When preparing for a project handoff, remember: what may come naturally to you may not come easy for your client. That’s why they needed your help in the first place. No matter how brilliant your recommendations may be, the realities of your client’s business and their current capabilities still need to be factored in. That’s not to say you can’t push boundaries or be ambitious in your vision — you should always strive to do that. But to do that well means ensuring that what you are recommending is achievable; maybe not by tomorrow, or in six months, but it must be achievable.

If you can, work directly with the teams who will be responsible for implementing strategy and design directions. Find out how they’re organizing themselves and where the gaps are. Do they have writers on staff? Are they familiar with the CMS platform we’re using? Will other members of their organization need to be onboarded? Having open conversations about your client team’s capabilities and pain points will help you understand how they’re organizing themselves and where the gaps might be. How you bridge these gaps is what will set your working relationship apart from others.

In doing so, focus on tools and documentation that are tailored and actionable. Maybe that’s a one-off Google Site with annotated design documents, or pre-CMS content template and migration checklists to guide content creation. In addressing these obstacles, clients can confidently move forward and govern their vision autonomously.

Foster ownership early

Successful project handoffs usually happen when clients feel completely bought into the process, even as early on as the beginning stages of a project. They’ve been listened to and feel heard. They’ve been armed with all the information and empowered to make educated decisions. There is also a mutual respect for the value each of you brings to the table. If all those statements are true, then congrats, you’ve fostered shared ownership with your client.

This sounds simple but can oftentimes get complicated by how well aligned and involved all of the client’s organizational stakeholders are. Sometimes, these power dynamics and org charts are not immediately obvious to you as the person facilitating presentations and approvals. There is a simple framework you can use to help suss out who all the players are and how to keep them in sync: core team vs. extended team.

Core Team

Your core team will be the stakeholders who should be aware of work as it’s in progress. This core team will help vet ideas and act as a sounding board to validate that your work is on the right track. This usually consists of your direct point of contact along with 2–4 people empowered to represent their discipline or area of focus on behalf of their organization. Touch points for a core team may include creative workshops to brainstorm initial concepts, or regularly recurring work share sessions where they will see preliminary designs or code demos. This may also be the group that receives a weekly status report and gets in the weeds on timelines and milestones.

Extended Team

The extended team will be stakeholders who see work only in polished or near-final states. They’ll usually be the people that hold ultimate approval power and are responsible for the organization’s mission (and budgets). This group usually consists of upper-level management to c-suite members. Touch points for an extended team will usually only include in-person presentations at key milestones of the project.

The Overlap

There will naturally be some overlap between the core and extended team. These teams can also expand and contract at various moments of the project, allowing for members to either take a greater role than before, perhaps as things relate more to their area of interest, or recede from the grind as it makes sense.

By using this model, knowing when to elevate decisions, how to structure presentations, and who to include in meetings becomes a lot less ambiguous. And, ultimately, helps you foster ownership among all stakeholders in effective and appropriate ways.

More can be more

Particularly when it comes to handoffs, being aligned on who’s responsible for what is paramount. Don’t be shy about over-communicating expectations to confirm these roles and the time frame in which things need to get done. Not only will this ensure everyone understands what they need to do, but it also ensures that everyone understands what each party is not doing. It’s what’s in that “not” column that can be easily assumed as someone else’s responsibility, which can cause undue stress, especially towards the last few weeks of a project.

The final wrap up of a project is also a great opportunity to overdeliver on documentation. Organize and annotate design files so they are easy to navigate, catalog functional requirements for developers, and prototype out animations or user interactions. This will be time well spent, saving time later on when clients don’t have to come back to you to ask for information or guidance.

Last but not least, when delivering documentation, review it together with the client. Set up a call to walk through materials to make sure everyone understands its contents. This is a sure-fire way to know that these materials were looked at and absorbed instead of getting stuck in someone’s inbox. Even better, it will let you know right away if the information is unclear, thus giving everyone another opportunity to clarify questions before moving on.

These simple principles can help start a project handoff, or a transition in ownership, off on the right foot. Not only will this help you with a smooth transition of ownership as a project winds down, but these are also valuable lessons to remember for any stage of a project. Valuing your client’s perspective, making recommendations clear and specific, and keeping everyone involved included and properly utilized will always set you, and your client, up for success.

Project Handoffs: Setting Your Clients Up For Success was originally published in Inspire + Advance on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Professional certifications have become increasingly popular in this age of career switchers and the freelance gig economy. A certification can be a useful way to advance your skill set quickly or make your resume stand out, which can be especially important for those trying to break into a new industry or attract business while self-employed. Whatever your reason may be for pursuing a professional certificate, there is one question only you can answer for yourself: is it worth it?

Finding first-hand experiences from professionals with similar career goals and passions was the most helpful research I used to answer that question for myself. So, here’s mine; why I decided to get Scrum certified, how I evaluated my options, and if it was really worth it.

A shift in mindset

My background originates in brand strategy where it’s typical for work to follow a predictable order, each step informing the next. This made linear techniques like water-fall timelines, completing one phase of work in its entirety before moving onto the next, and documenting granular tasks weeks in advance helpful and easy to implement. When I made the move to more digitally focused work, tasks followed a much looser set of ‘typical’ milestones. While the general outline remained the same (strategy, design, development, launch) there was a lot more overlap with how tasks informed each other, and would keep informing and re-informing as an iterative workflow would encourage.

Trying to fit a very fluid process into my very stuff linear approach to project planning didn’t work so well. I didn’t have the right strategies to manage risks in a productive way without feeling like the whole project was off track; with the habit of account for granular details all the time, I struggled to lean on others to help define what we should work on and when, and being okay if that changed once, or twice, or three times. Everything I learned about the process of product development came from learning on the job and making a ton of mistakes — and I knew I wanted to get better.

I was fortunate enough to work with a group of developers who were looking to make a change, too. Being ‘agile’-enthusiasts, this group of developers were desperately looking for ways to infuse our approach to product work with agile-minded principles (the broad definition of ‘agile’ comes from ‘The Agile Manifesto’, which has influenced frameworks for organizing people and information, often applied in product development). This not only applied to how I worked with them, but how they worked with each other, and the way we all onboarded clients to these new expectations. This was a huge eye opener to me. Soon enough, I started applying these agile strategies to my day-to-day — running stand-ups, setting up backlogs, and reorganizing the way I thought about work output. It’s from this experience that I decided it may be worth learning these principles more formally.

The choice to get certified

There is a lot of literature out there about agile methodologies and a lot to be learned from casual research. This benefitted me for a while until I started to work on more complicated projects, or projects with more ambitious feature requests. My decision to ultimately pursue a formal agile certification really came down to three things:

1. An increased use of agile methods across my team. Within my day-to-day I would encounter more team members who were familiar with these tactics and wanted to use them to structure the projects they worked on.
2. The need for a clear definition of what processes to follow. I needed to grasp a real understanding of how to implement agile processes and stay consistent with using them to be an effective champion of these principles.
3. Being able to diversify my experience. Finding ways to differentiate my resume from others with similar experience would be an added benefit to getting a certification. If nothing else, it would demonstrate that I’m curious-minded and proactive about my career.

To achieve these things, I gravitated towards a more foundational education in a specific agile-methodology. This made Scrum the most logical choice given it’s the basis for many of the agile strategies out there and its dominance in the field.

Evaluating all the options

For Scrum education and certification, there are really two major players to consider.

1. Scrum Alliance — Probably the most well known Scrum organization is Scrum Alliance. They are a highly recognizable organization that does a lot to further the broader understanding of Scrum as a practice.
2. Scrum.org — Led by the original co-founder of Scrum, Ken Schwaber, Scrum.org is well-respected and touted for its authority in the industry.

Each has their own approach to teaching and awarding certifications as well as differences in price point and course style that are important to be aware of.

Scrum Alliance

PROS

• Strong name recognition and leaders in the Scrum field
• Offers both in-person and online courses
• Hosts in-person events, webinars, and global conferences
• Provides robust amounts of educational resources for its members
• Has specialization tracks for folks looking to apply Scrum to their specific discipline
• Members are required to keep their skills up to date by earning educational credits throughout the year to retain their certification
• Consistent information across all course administrators ensuring you’ll be set up to succeed when taking your certification test.

Cons

• High cost creates a significant barrier to entry (we’re talking in the thousands of dollars here)
• Courses are required to take the certification test
• Certification expires after two years, requiring additional investment in time and/or money to retain credentials
• Difficult to find sample course material ahead of committing to a course
• Courses are several days long which may mean taking time away from a day job to complete them

Scrum.org

Pros

• Strong clout due to its founder, Ken Schwaber, who is the originator of Scrum
• Offers in-person classes and self-paced options
• Hosts in-person events and meetups around the world
• Provides free resources and materials to the public, including practice tests
• Has specialization tracks for folks looking to apply Scrum to their specific discipline
• Minimum score on certification test required to pass; certification lasts for life
• Lower cost for certification when compared to peers

Cons

• Much lesser known to the general public, as compared to its counterpart
• Less sophisticated educational resources (mostly confined to PDFs or online forums) making digesting the material challenging
• Practice tests are slightly out of date making them less effective as a study tool
• Self-paced education is not structured and therefore can’t ensure you’re learning everything you need to know for the test
• Lack of active and engaging community will leave something to be desired

Before coming to a decision, it was helpful to me to weigh these pros and cons against a set of criteria. Here’s a helpful scorecard I used to compare the two institutions.

For me, the four areas that were most important to me were:

• Affordability — I’d be self-funding this certificate so the investment of cost would need to be manageable.
• Self-paced — Not having a lot of time to devote in one sitting, the ability to chip away at coursework was appealing to me.
• Reputation — Having a certificate backed by a well-respected institution was important to me if I was going to put in the time to achieve this credential.
• Access — Because I wanted to be a champion for this framework for others in my organization, having access to resources and materials would help me do that more effectively.

Ultimately, I decided upon a Professional Scrum Master certification from Scrum.org! The price and flexibility of learning course content were most important to me. I found a ton of free materials on Scrum.org that I could study myself and their practice tests gave me a good idea of how well I was progressing before I committed to the cost of actually taking the test. And, the pedigree of certification felt comparable to that of Scrum Alliance, especially considering that the founder of Scrum himself ran the organization.

Putting a certificate to good use

I don’t work in a formal Agile company, and not everyone I work with knows the ins and outs of Scrum. I didn’t use my certification to leverage a career change or new job title. So after all that time, money, and energy, was it worth it?

I think so. I feel like I use my certification every day and employ many of the principles of Scrum in my day-to-day management of projects and people.

• Self-organizing teams is really important when fostering trust and collaboration among project members. This means leaning on each other’s past experiences and lessons learned to inform our own approach to work. It also means taking a step back as a project manager to recognize the strengths on your team and trust their lead.
• Approaching things in bite size pieces is also a best practice I use every day. Even when there isn’t a mandated sprint rhythm, breaking things down into effort level, goals, and requirements is an excellent way to approach work confidently and avoid getting too overwhelmed.
• Retrospectives and stand ups are also absolute musts for Scrum practices, and these can be modified to work for companies and project teams of all shapes and sizes. Keeping a practice of collective communication and reflection will keep a team humming and provides a safe space to vent and improve.

Parting advice

I think furthering your understanding of industry standards and keeping yourself open to new ways of working will always benefit you as a professional. Professional certifications are readily available and may be more relevant than ever.

If you’re on this path, good luck! And here are some things to consider:

• Do your research — With so many educational institutions out there, you can definitely find the right one for you, with the level of rigor you’re looking for.
• Look for company credits or incentives — some companies cover part or all of the cost for continuing education.
• Get started ASAP — You don’t need a full certification to start implementing small tactics to your workflows. Implementing learnings gradually will help you determine if it’s really something you want to pursue more formally.

Pursuing A Professional Certification In Scrum was originally published in Inspire + Advance on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This article originally appeared on viget.com.

One of our focuses at Viget is to always be good consultants-even when it means pushing boundaries, challenging our clients to think critically about how they talk about themselves, or breaking the status quo with cutting-edge design and technology.

We always have a common goal with our clients: to make the best end product possible. We want to get there with a shared understanding, process, and enthusiasm about the work.

This context is always helpful to lay out at the beginning of any new engagement. But it also lets our clients know they’re in this with us-and that there are certain expectations that come with being a client. With this article, organizations on the receiving end of work like ours can learn concrete ways to help keep a project moving forward.

Appoint a client-side Project Manager.

While consultants are tasked with handling the work, there will certainly be times when we’ll need to get feedback on a deliverable, get a download of some organizational structure or industry, learn about a client’s product, and more.

Likewise, we always like to review budget, timeline, and tasks to keep our clients abreast of what’s happening on their project at any given time. All this means we need streamlined communication.

It’s most efficient to channel everything through one person on the client side. We recommend up to eight hours per week over the course of the project-sometimes it can be more, and sometimes less. This works best when that time is set aside as an actual commitment-it gets everyone in a regular and predictable cadence and will prevent your staff from experiencing project burnout.

Deliver batched feedback.

The best client contacts are skilled wranglers of batched feedback. We’ve experienced both sides of this coin-a single collated list from one person, and a smattering of thoughts collected from executives and other departments that often contradict one another, copied and pasted into multiple emails. The former is much more productive. Then we don’t have to spend a client’s budget combing through a list of line items that don’t add up, make sense, or convey different messages, and then have the back and forth needed to resolve them.

If there’s one person we’re communicating with, they’ll also have a good idea of the decisions we’ve made along the way, and why we’ve made them. That will help them filter out irrelevant requests or spark internal discussions that can be beneficial.

Along these lines, it’s also very helpful when a client provides feedback that is:

This is a lot to ask for, but the closer we all can adhere to this model, the more efficiently the project can move without sacrificing quality.

Get your stakeholders involved in key decisions.

More often than not, the executives who approved the budget or key decision makers for the company will need to weigh in. It’s crucial to identify these people early on, which is something we can do collaboratively, and get them in the room during strategic milestones.

This mostly falls under a client’s domain, but we are eager to support those conversations. We can assist by sending out an early agenda, conveying the importance of the subject matter, and impressing upon stakeholders how ignoring big milestone decisions throughout the project can have implications for budget and timeline down the road.

The repercussions of not getting the right stakeholders involved are significant. It’s important to take early steps to avoid it. Internally, agencies should work to figure out those milestone dates. And on the client side, do whatever you can to loop the right people in, and don’t be afraid to ask us for help. (We can always record a meeting or take diligent notes as a last resort, but this removes the opportunity for stakeholders to interact.)

Timeliness is key.

At the start of a project, you’ll more than likely see a wonderfully laid out timeline with phases, key milestones, and review dates. Sometimes, this falls apart as we go through the project. As one thing gets delayed, it causes another to get delayed, and so on. These timelines inevitably turn into living documents.

That said, there is a tendency near the beginning of projects to feel more comfortable letting things slip because the end of the project may feel far away. One of our jobs as consultants is to get as hyper-specific as we can plotting milestones out across a calendar, which means it doesn’t matter when something slips, just if it does.

We do everything we can to stick to schedules, so it’s important that clients try to do the same. If things start to slide, we’ll encounter blockers, may have to pause work, or be forced to make decisions that may impact work down the road. These feedback loops should be established and agreed upon before feedback actually needs to start happening-that way, everyone knows what to expect when we move into that phase together.

Help us prioritize.

If there are strict time or budget constraints for a project, it’s fair to think of software development in terms of trade-offs-a rapid development cycle often means starting with an off-the-shelf solution; comprehensive documentation means a less polished product; adding a new feature may require sacrificing an old one. The examples are numerous, but it’s best not to think about this kind of work in a silo.

The concept in its barest form is simple: there is only a certain amount of time that can be spent, so adding more things adds more time (and therefore, budget). We can use our best judgement for prioritizing one feature, artifact, or design over another, but decisions like these are best made in conjunction with a client. They will know better than anyone what is most important to them.

Ask questions.

Our clients’ levels of familiarity with digital work varies. Sometimes, explaining how to interpret a wireframe is a waste of time-sometimes, it’s a totally new concept and worthwhile exercise.

A client should feel empowered to ask questions about anything and everything that doesn’t make sense to them. Questions make the work better. Specific inquiries about how we landed on a certain design pattern, why we chose one tool over another, or why an interaction is prototyped a certain way can help facilitate critical thinking across both teams. Don’t be afraid to ask questions about our decisions-and certainly if what something means isn’t immediately clear.

We do the same on our side. As a Project Manager, I’m often reviewing designs or feature sets before they are presented to a client. It’s my job to interpret these with an outsider’s perspective as well. This sometimes airs requirements we may have not accounted for, helps uncover bugs, and gives the creators an opportunity to hear how their work is interpreted from someone who hasn’t been thinking about it as much (which is usually more representative of what the end user’s perspective will be).

Tell us when you don’t feel comfortable.

We’re going to extend a client’s comfort zone. There will be times when they’ll be pushed, hesitant, or surprised. That’s good.

What’s not good is when they feel uncomfortable about the state of the work, the budget, the timeline, or overall project health. We want to know that as soon as possible so we can course correct together.

Let’s be forthright about scope.

The word “scope” can make people cringe. It’s often a nebulous term used to encompass an individual perspective upon what fits within a project. The reason it’s nebulous and individual is because it’s impossible to fully define all work that will happen to get a software project across the finish line, and one person’s opinion on what goes into that may be vastly different than another’s. Unexpected items will come up.

However, there should be enough clarity established throughout the sales process to create a shared understanding of what we’re all working towards. With this idea as a guidepost, we can have productive discussions about what work can fit within budget, and what can’t. If budget can flex, scope can grow. If it can’t, we’ll have to think in terms of trade-offs. Our best clients understand this, and want to work together to find solutions.

I mentioned at the beginning of this article that we always try to be good consultants. A big part of that means setting expectations, both for what clients can expect to see from us throughout the project, and what we’re looking for from them. They’re both equally important.

If I had to condense this article into one takeaway, it’d be this: the more aware clients are of how big an impact they can have on process and the end product, the better everything will turn out.

Stay engaged, be transparent, and work hard-and we’ll do the same.

Originally published at https://www.viget.com on October 1, 2019.

How to Be a Great Client was originally published in Inspire + Advance on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There are a zillion tools out there, built to help keep project teams and material organized. It’s easy to get bogged down in a sea of shared documents, all living in separate places. Even when a filing system exists, remembering where information is stored can be exhausting. Is it in Google Drive? Did someone share that with me in Slack? Or maybe it was posted in Basecamp? It’s no wonder that despite every project manager’s good intention, the inevitable ends up happening: the organizational system goes out the window and you resort to one-off sharing of links over, and over, and over, and over again.

Or, people just stop trying to find things. And those carefully formatted meeting notes, in the nicely labeled folders, on that shared workspace might as well be a black hole.

Knowing this pitfall, and experiencing it on my own projects, I needed to find a different way to share information with my project team without reinventing the wheel. I started using a “project wiki” system for centralizing project material and information. Not only has this helped my team to have one single place to go to for everything they could need, it’s helped me stay aware of what types of information is worth documenting in this way.

What’s a Project Wiki?

At its core, a project wiki is a centralized place of reference that speeds up the process of locating project information and material. Structurally, a project wiki should have organized collections of information that are kept up to date as the project evolves.

A project wiki can be comprised of lots of things, but there are four basic sections that I have found to be the most useful.

Quick Links

A quick links section is the place for resources you refer to for the entirety of the project. These should be links relevant to everyone on your project team. They should also be links to things that will remain static throughout the project so you don’t have to worry about constantly updating this section.

Some of my essentials include:

• Shared workspace
• Google Drive folder
• Contracts and budget sheets
• Status report
• Timeline

Working Files

Here is where your team’s working documents go. Any time a team member shares something for group review, it goes to this section for posterity. This list should be kept relevant to the engagement at hand and should be updated as new versions necessitate. I think of this as the list of files I would need to reference to build the final deliverables for a project.

Decks & Meeting Notes

Keeping meeting notes and presentations in a single folder can be a pain, especially on projects that have distinct (and sometimes separate) phases where related material may be stored in a place specific to that phase.

Listing meetings in chronological order has worked best for me. In addition to the presentation deck and meeting notes document, make sure to include any supplementary links referenced in the presentation.

Client Provided Materials

This does not have to be an exhaustive list of everything the client has provided and can function similar to the Quick Links section. You can also include links to entire folders, websites, Basecamp posts-anything that the client has referenced and is important for your team to be able to access quickly.

Using Slack Posts as a Wiki

Where you create and maintain your project wiki is as much of a function of personal preference as it is the tools your team uses. At Viget, we have a Slack channel for every project; Slack is essential when working with teams across our four offices. It’s the one tool every single team member uses so it felt like a natural place to house my wiki.

Utilizing the post feature in Slack, you can create a native post to your Slack channel. Posts can be shared directly with Slack users or channels and can be starred or pinned for easy locating. Perhaps the best thing about Slack posts is that they open up in a separate window when editing, as well as expand inline when being viewed in a channel. This eliminates having to open any additional applications to get to the information you’re looking for.

Wiki Tips

Staying disciplined is always the challenge when creating and maintaining any type of organizational system. When creating your own project wiki, keep these things in mind:

• Pick a tool you’ll gravitate towards using to make building this habit easier. Tools that are widely adopted by the people you’re working with is also an important consideration.
• Focus on reducing the number of clicks required to get to any one file. This should hopefully encourage adoption of the wiki from your team.
• Wikis can also be a great resource to support project on-boarding or team transitions. Make it easy for new team members to get familiar with basic project knowledge and the work that has already been done so they can hit the ground running.
• Consider if your client would also benefit from having a wiki. Organization can be hard for clients with multiple priorities. Creating a shared project wiki is one way to help client’s keep track of the project.

Originally published at www.viget.com on January 22, 2020.

The Case For Project Wikis was originally published in Inspire + Advance on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Last spring, Shaan and I hosted a hardware workshop to introduce other Vigets to the wide world of Arduino and share our love of hardware prototyping. Drinks were enjoyed, circuits were built, and LEDs were blinked. You might say it was very #lit.

If They Build It They Will Learn

Even though Viget has hardware expertise and a portfolio of fun and interesting projects, not everyone in the company has been exposed to open source electronics platforms. In the spirit of knowledge sharing, we set out to talk a bit about the basics of circuit building, provide an overview of the Arduino platform, and demonstrate how to get started prototyping projects.

Our goal was to get others energized about hardware possibilities so we made this workshop as hands on as possible — meaning plugging jumper wires into breadboards and writing real code by the end of the night. Our team built a simple circuit that could detect motion and flash as series of LEDs. If you’re interested in hosting a similar event, here’s how we went about it and a few tips for making it a successful workshop.

Make it Easy to Attend

We we sent out a survey to the entire office to gauge interest and identify a time and day that would work best. We settled on doing it outside of working hours so folks wouldn’t have to cut into time for client work.

Bring the Snacks

We ordered a few pizzas and had cold beverages on hand as well. Pro tip: if for whatever reason you need a method for quickly dividing attendees into two groups, kill two birds with one stone by ordering a Hawaiian Pizza. There are two kinds of people: those who believe pineapple is both an acceptable and delicious topping, and people who are actual monsters. Viget was kind enough to stake our provisions but if that’s not an option, I think a few easy snacks would do the trick.

Know Your Audience

One of the added benefits of surveying for times was knowing who was planning to attend. We were excited to see interest from a wide range of roles: Project Managers, UX Designers, Front-End Developers, Back-end Developers, and Copywriters. Nearly all Viget teams were represented! This information gave us some insight into the group’s working knowledge and helped us structure the content of the workshop accordingly.

Keep it 101

Looking back, structuring the content was probably the most challenging part of the workshop. Shaan and I went back and forth on how much detail to provide and found ourselves constantly revising our deck. Should we cover board basics like IO pins and what they do: definitely; Should we discuss the value of data sheets and how to read them: no, not this time. Should we talk about serial communication and debugging practices: I don’t know, maybe?

As enthusiasts, all these things are important and deciding which to include and which to cut was difficult. Giving ourselves a constraint of two hours and prioritizing accordingly was helpful — we decided to use at little more than half of our time building circuits and writing code. This helped refocus the workshop on what newbies would need to know to build the project we had in mind. What resulted as a lean and mean presentation centered around Arduino board pinouts, the essential elements of every sketch, and how electricity flows through a circuit.

Here’s how we structured our workshop:

• Arduino Platform Overview and History
• Examples of Arduino-powered things
• Microcontrollers and Why They’re Easy to Work With
• Arduino Uno GPIO and Power Pins
• Arduino Integrated Development Environment (IDE) Overview
• Elements of a Sketch
• Electronics Basics and Analogies for Voltage, Current and Resistance
• Resources for Learning More
• Tonight’s Build Overview
• Parts Needed and How to Use Them
• Circuit Schematic
• Group Coding

Here’s what we found worked well and some things we’d do differently.

Build and Document the Project in Advance

This goes without saying but if you’re planning on demonstrating or building any kind of project live, make sure you’ve already built the thing yourself. Practicing the build can help identify unconventional sketch patterns, eliminate unnecessary steps, and understand wiring connections that might be confusing to first timers, all things that can trip you up when it comes time instruct and guide others.

Even though Shaan and I took care to prototype all iterations of the project build, we still uncovered missing steps when doing the build live, like, forgetting to explain the terminal and power strips on a breadboard. This was a step that didn’t occur to us to document at the time, but we should have.

Make Example Code Easy to Read

Even if your group has experience with writing code I would suspect the Arduino IDE and programming language will present a little bit of a learning curve. So give functions meaningful names, add comments to every line of code and write out the word “variable” every time you define one. We learned that when it came to writing example code, it’s best to be verbose, even to a fault. This is especially true when working with novice coders.

Easy on Theory, Heavy on Examples

If you take a look at the deck, you’ll see we kept the background information short and sweet. The group was attentive throughout and successful once we got to the build, so I think we did strike the right fidelity of information. We didn’t include many examples outside of the ones necessary for the build, but I think the group could have benefited from more examples of sketches and how to wire different components together.

Have Ways to Increase Difficulty Fun

Our build was pretty simple: blink an LED on and off every other second. We knew everyone would be able to get this down pretty quickly. The next build included three LEDs and blinking them one after another in a chase sequence. The last build challenged everyone to incorporate a vibration sensor into their circuit and get the LED to blink when motion was sensed. I think it’s important that we didn’t treat each build as successive tasks during the workshop. Shaan and I didn’t want people to think or feel like they “didn’t get as far” or “finish the assignment.” We just framed as other ways to explore a simple circuit.

Reserve Plenty of Time for Pairing

Make sure the time you set aside for the build include lots of time to make yourself available to help others with questions. And as you might imagine, this ended up being the most rewarding experience of the workshop. Helping others learn and seeing them immediately build a project together was so much fun. There’s also that incomparable feeling you get when sharing a passion with others. So make sure there’s enough time for the best part!

Originally published at www.viget.com.

How to Host a Hardware Happy Hour was originally published in Inspire + Advance on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What do you get when you combine five eager apprentices, a conservation nonprofit, and a website in as much need of tender loving care as the polluted creek it depicts? The answer is a pro bono project that our clients said was “like Christmas.”

The Win-Win-Win

Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association (ECWA) is a small North Carolina-based organization that works tirelessly to improve the health of Ellerbe Creek and its surrounding land. Given their modest marketing budget, it soon became clear that they were candidates for the pro bono projects Viget takes on from time to time as part of its mission to make the web a better place.

The timing of the project fit perfectly within our winter apprenticeship, and we apprentices soon realized it was a juicy opportunity to hone our skills with a real-world client for whom there was an established need. We would get to lead the charge on the project and make a tangible contribution to raising the profile of ECWA and its impact. It was a win for us, a win for Viget’s philanthropic endeavors, and a win for ECWA, who would get thoughtful brand and design work at no cost.

We originally promised to take a five-week sprint to develop a “website strategy,” which included high fidelity compositions of three key pages, along with a web style guide, recommendations for an off-the-shelf Content Management System, and guidance on how to use it. Where we ended up was quite different, and thereby hangs this tale.

We started by seeking to better understand ECWA’s vision and the drawbacks of its existing website, which was inconsistent, dated, and difficult to navigate. It failed to communicate critical information: What (even) is a watershed? Who is ECWA? What do they do? Why should we care? In short, the website was holding ECWA back, disconnecting it from the community it served.

Our Process

After Senior UX Designer Curt Arledge led stakeholder interviews, we conducted a brand attributes exercise to get a stronger sense of how ECWA wants to be seen in the world. From that, we were able to extract a working set of values-including genuine, fun, accountable, inclusive, innovative-upon which to base our strategy.

Simultaneously, we carried out an audit of conservation organizations big and small, looking at their websites’ structure and messaging. We also logged every page of ECWA’s website and where it lived within the information hierarchy, and analyzed the data that showed how users were interacting with those pages (thanks, Google Analytics).

We could see which gems of content were being overlooked -articles rich with imagery and storytelling were hidden deep inside the navigation, and as a result got very few pageviews. We also noticed that site traffic was at its highest in late spring and summer, which later influenced our recommendations for verdant evergreen imagery evocative of ECWA’s most popular season.

Armed with ECWA’s value set, data on the current site’s performance, goals for what visitors should be able to do, and insights into how other nonprofits were standing out from the crowd, we began our redesign. We experimented with three different design directions that spoke to brand attributes the ECWA team had identified.

• Widen the Water Movement
  This activism-focused approach invited site visitors to jump on board a train fueled by people power. It presented ECWA as a tireless advocate for the watershed, working on the ground to implement solutions with real impact. The brand voice was simple, direct, and urgent. The palette was inspired by the brick cityscape of Durham and the red clay soils of North Carolina.

• Spirited Durhamites
  This design direction majored on inclusivity and diversity while highlighting elements of the quirky personality for which the city of Durham is admired. It was intended to appeal to people who might not have seen themselves as conservationists but who were looking for an open-minded organization to join. The voice was light-hearted and down-to-earth. Its bright color scheme and playful typefaces were grounded in Durham’s kaleidoscopic culture.

• Do the Neighborly Thing
  Our third approach focused on connection and collaboration in the local community. It portrayed ECWA as a way for residents to get to know each other better and preserve the legacy in their backyard. The brand voice sounded warm, positive, and inviting. The palette and imagery drew on the healing influence of the natural world, while the modern typefaces embodied solidarity and friendliness.

ECWA felt the neighborly angle was closest to their cause, augmented by aspects of the other two approaches.

Next we developed a new information architecture for ECWA’s prospective site, which highlighted their nature preserves as well as the story of how they came to be. We made it easy to find rich information about the projects and initiatives ECWA runs. In the “Get Involved” section, we wanted to make sure a visitor to the site could clearly understand all the actions they might take to get involved with ECWA, from donating money to attending an event, in order to deepen audience engagement.

We designed a suite of brand assets including icons for each of ECWA’s preserves. We also created customized maps, a graphic of a watershed, a wordmark, and a more modern and mobile-friendly version of their logo.

Through this experience, we came to understand that branding can be tricky for nonprofits. They often aren’t used to leaning into an aspect of design/communication as it can feel commercial. Their cause is their purpose, and putting effort into brand work can feel like a vanity project. But ECWA trusted us and our pledge that more consistent branding would be a mobilizing force. They embraced the streamlining of their logo and understood the value of creating a wordmark that gave a site visitor a simple, elegant visual anchor to the brand.

They were also extremely open to our recommendations about how to improve content, which included moving the focus away from news and academic writing in favor of surfacing high quality, accessible, evergreen content.

Going Above and Beyond

ECWA’s constructive feedback, and the rapidity with which they were willing to give it, meant that we could move fast. It was burdensome for the ECWA team to keep up with our demands for input, but they did, and their contributions gave us wings. Instead of generating three high fidelity page compositions, we got to nine. Our web implementation guide was so detailed that it even contained links to custom tutorials. After careful consideration of the options, we had already chosen a web hosting service, Weebly, and to better understand its constraints, had begun bringing some design vision to life through one of its themes. We realized that we were-despite vowing not to-actually building ECWA a new website.

This led us to a scope reevaluation. We asked our mentors if we could pursue the project for one more week, and ECWA hustled to send us new content for many of the pages. By the time that sprint ended, their website was 70% complete. We delivered customizations to the generic Weebly theme, such as a bespoke donate button and stylish dropdown menus, thanks to some major effort on the part of our front-end development apprentice. Being able to give ECWA a 7-star experience, far surpassing the expectations we initially set, felt satisfying for everyone.

The Legacy

This pro bono project may be unique in Viget’s canon of work because of the value it provided to professionals-in-training, as well as to the client. Apprentices haven’t historically owned a project, nor do they necessarily all collaborate closely together (unlike interns). Both of these things have helped make the apprenticeship program extremely enriching and unifying for this cohort. We look forward to celebrating the site’s launch in May, and are proud to have helped ECWA develop a web strategy that will amplify its impact, now and in the future.

Becky is a User Experience Designer who found her way from Wales, UK, to our office in Boulder, CO. She loves telling human-centered stories and appreciating the hidden design in everything.

Reneé is a designer and former art museum professional living in Durham, NC. Her lifeblood is strategically cultivating ideas and crafting experiences that can be enjoyed by many.

Originally published at https://www.viget.com on March 29, 2019.

Doing the Neighborly Thing: How Viget’s Apprentices Helped a Local Nonprofit Amplify Its Impact |… was originally published in Inspire + Advance on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.