This document discusses challenges and best practices for ongoing website support and maintenance after a site launch. It addresses perspectives from both agencies and clients. Key points include the need for open communication, flexible billing approaches like time and materials to allow for changing priorities, maintaining sites to reduce technical debt, and how small maintenance tasks can have big impacts on things like site speed and SEO. Regular check-ins are important to understand priorities and ensure goals are met efficiently.

1. OLD DOGS, NEW TRICKS:
SUPPORTING WEBSITES AFTER LAUNCH

2. JOE CRESPO
@JSCRESPO

5. @ATENDESIGN

6. ATEN
Digital Design
Development
Strategy
FOCUS
Cause-Driven Organizations

10. YOU'VE LAUNCHED... WHAT NOW?

11. PRODUCTION SUPPORT:
THE AGENCY'S PERSPECTIVE
Post-launch (Phase II) catch-all.
After-thought / loss-leader.
Maintain relationship until next big piece of work.

12. PRODUCTION SUPPORT CHALLENGES
Guesstimation.
Billing & project management.
Hurry up and wait.

13. GUESSTIMATION
Upfront overhead.
Complex task, large margin of error.

14. BILLING & PROJECT MANAGEMENT
FIXED-FEE
Poor incentives for both parties.
Fixed-fee client: control cost, push scope.
Fixed-fee agency: push cost, control scope.
Quality = casualty.

15. BILLING & PROJECT MANAGEMENT
TIME AND MATERIALS
Turns scope creep on its head.
Time and materials, client: set priorities, give feedback.
Time and materials, agency: more "yes and", less "no".
Goal = efficiency.

16. HURRY UP AND WAIT
Retainers and sprints.
Feast or famine.
Snack or splurge.

17. COMMUNICATION
Always, early and often.
Time & Materials requires trust & transparency.
Weekly check-ins: priorities, progress, goals, options.
Builds relationships with clients.
Builds deep understanding of clients' sites.

18. PRODUCTION SUPPORT:
CLIENT CHALLENGES
Active maintenance.
Identifying ways to improve the site.
Right-sizing the engagement / budget.

19. ACTIVE MAINTENANCE
Keeps the site secure.
Helps to recognize areas of improvement.
Keeping down technical debt holds a rebuild at bay.

20. SITE IMPROVEMENTS
Clients know their message / product / service best.
Clients are experts at their field, which is likely not web
development.
Client: always share the high-level objective for the task.
Agency: listen for the objectives in incoming requests.

21. RIGHT-SIZING THE ENGAGEMENT
Emergency hotfixes today.
Feature build next month.
Requires flexible, responsive development capacity.

22. COMMUNICATION
Always, early and often.
Time & Materials -> understanding your priorities.
Weekly check-ins: learning best practices for web
development.
Creating a partner to assist with long-term strategy.

23. PRODUCTION SUPPORT:
A WORD FOR THE DEVELOPER
Hey.

24. DEVELOPER CHALLENGES
Perception: it's all dull break-fix work.
Perception: huge projects are sexy, small feature builds...
not so much.
Perception: Terrible for résumé-building.

26. AWESOME FOR THE DEVELOPER
Fixing bad code makes you a better developer.
Small projects are great for learning something new.
Best practices? A bunch of clients? A lot of different
technology? Come on now, the résumé writes itself.

27. SMALL INVESTMENTS, BIG IMPACT
CASE STUDIES

28. CASE STUDY #1
BEING ON THE SAME TEAM

30. CLIENT REQUEST:
Audit header tags (<h1>, <h2>... etc.)

31. WHY?
SEO

32. OUR RECOMMENDATION:
Adjust content
Enable xmlsitemap module
Audit the site's speed

33. PINGDOM SPEED TEST
(before)

34. PINGDOM SPEED TEST
(detail)

35. ENTER VARNISH
(almost impossibly, their mascot is worse than Drupal's)

36. PINGDOM SPEED TEST
(after)

37. CASE STUDY #2
RUBBER, MEET ROAD

40. SOLUTIONS:
Cache all the things.
Search the DOM, not the server.
Lighten the payload.

43. CASE STUDY #3
TRAFFIC COP

45. GLOBAL INITIATIVES:
Climate
Energy
Food
Forests
Water
Cities & Transport
CROSS-CUTTING CENTERS:
Business
Economics
Finance
Governance

47. @ATENDESIGN
JOE CRESPO @JSCRESPO