Summary of New Process
With the launch of your brand new website, the delivery phase with all of its testing, bug-logging and fixing comes to its natural end. Hopefully, you will have enjoyed a close and collaborative relationship with the team at SMILE. If you’re transitioning to our hosting and maintenance package HappyPress – great! We aim to deliver the same level of service moving forward into the future.
| Pre-launch | Post-launch |
| Slack | Live Chat |
| Bug-logging through marker.io | Start a support ticket |
| Reactive changes to scope | Change control request form |
| Pace calls | Tactical monthly meetings (available as a bolt-on) |
What kind of things should we expect will change and why?
Over of the course of a project’s working duration, deadlines are made, timelines drawn up and hours are planned based on the requirements of the complete package of work. As well as pure design and development, there are a lot of operations hours spent on meetings, reactive correspondence and issue triage.
With the move to hosting and maintenance, a final product has been signed off for launch. Any changes to that product require a more formal structure in order to sign-off and schedule extra work that is is no longer covered by the scope of the working project.
Bugs that damage the look and functionality of the site now need to be logged as support tickets for investigation and triage by our Support team. Priority decisions and SLAs come into play. New feature requests and changes to original scope now need to be time and cost estimated by our Operations team. Long-term strategy is discussed at regular tactical meetings rather than sometimes-weekly pace calls held in-project.
The process generally becomes less reactive and more deliberate and this is all for the better. The original scope has been realised and we can now make plans to keep the site in good shape while helping it to evolve with clear direction moving forward.
How do I get in touch?
Following a successful launch, any slack channels used by the project working group will be closed. By far the quickest and most convenient way to get in touch with us is via the live chat widget which you can find on the dashboard in the backend of your site. You can of course continue to email any team members directly for help and advice. The advantage of live chat, however, is that our whole operations teams has eyes on it. This protects against response delays due to annual leave or meetings.
Can I still log bugs?
Of course! However, the way that you report problems with your site will change. You may have been using a tool such as marker.io to log bugs with us during the testing phase. While this is a quick and convenient way to record a wave of issues for development attention during testing, it is not practical when issue management is governed by SLAs.
Instead, we ask that you open a support ticket with us. Including as much detail as possible will help us to assign a priority level to your ticket and delegate it out to the right team member efficiently. You can attach supporting evidence such as screen captures or recordings directly via the form. Alternatively, you can use a service such as droplr to host media and link to it in the description.
You can read more about how to write a good support ticket here.
I have ideas for new improvements
If you’d like to formally request a change to the way your site looks or functions, you can submit a change control request with specifications. Our team will endeavour to get back to you within 48 hours with any clarifying questions should they be required. A cost estimate will be sent over to you as soon as the scope is clear.
What about pace calls?
The ability to regularly catch-up with our clients face-to-face in the midst of the delivery phase is one of the key factors to the successful outcome of our projects. We don’t want to lose sight of that fact moving into the HappyPress phase of our work together.
That is why we offer the opportunity to meet on a monthly basis with your Account Manager along with other team members currently involved in work on your site. We call these tactical meetings. They provide the opportunity to check-in on the general health of the site and report on works in progress as well as to plan new features.
Tactical Meetings are available as a bolt-on to your HappyPress subscription. You can find out about other optional extras such as support issue dashboards and life boat service while building your subscription.
Are there any other post-project offers to be aware of?
A HappyPress subscription affords us the means to keep your site up-to-date and functioning correctly within the scope of its original build. However, many of our customers are excited to push on with new features and additions. For those that return to us time and time again for enhancements, we recommend taking a look at our Evolve subscription. Evolve is a creative services retainer which offers great value. You can read more about it here.
We hope that this article has helped to clarify the change in comms strategy when transitioning to HappyPress post-launch. If you have any further questions, please get in touch.