Introduction

Sometimes, there’s a dire need to launch a website or a product in a time crunch because timing matters a lot in business. With a challenge to launch a website in a week for a leading venture capital firm in India, we decided to take it heads on. Our experience, of having completed many projects through processes was the guiding star, which gave us the ability and the maturity to break the process as needed.

Challenges

Sprinting while the convention is to go for a relay

Working by the process is smooth, you have a pre-decided clear image of how things happen, how much time will you need and what all you need. But once in awhile, you have to sail through the rough waters. In a project like Stellaris where you need to get things done irrespective of the time constraints, it is important to know how things can be done with or without the conventional process.

Being reasonably ambitious

We were excited to work with one of the leading venture capital firms in the country. This excitement couldn’t contain our plans of delivering an ambitious website. But soon as the reality of timely launch hit, we came up with an approach to set the right expectation and project plan. The target was set. The design and tech sat across the table with a big dream in the center to reason what was the most essential for the launch. The rest could be knocked down till after the launch.

Solution

Thinking in sync with client

Understanding what the client needs are imperative and seeing it through their lens is what aligns you with the project. While working on Stellaris we spent a large part of our time in understanding the need and conceptualizing the right solution. Execution after that became easier.

Fast results from faster decision making

When the project at hand is to be completed in 1/4th of the actual time it is supposed to take(and actually less than that), it is important to have a team that can think fast and communicates well. The decisions to be taken are important, complicated and can make or break the entire project. This ability to restructure and have clarity of what needs to happen helped us in moving out of the abstraction fast.

Working parallelly to have better coordination

Out of a general practice, we involved the dev team early on and it worked like a charm. We began the process with information architecture and finalized what features or sections needed to go in the website. Having this locked, the dev team created the backend structure while the design team worked on the visuals. This coordination hurled us forward.

Leave space for mishap by setting target days less than the deadline

We kept a deadline for ourselves to make the website live a day before the business was launched to the media so that there were no surprises at the eleventh hour (which is a reality in every project). There were no surprises for us but we did have a few things that the client needed for their launch. And an early action developed confidence with the client and helped the team with last minute firefighting. By keeping earlier deadlines you can call the bluff soon and not panic in the 11th hour. This way of working helped us in setting clear expectations and delivering it too.

Conclusion
As the media announced the launch of their business and their investment deals, reporters and the whole investor and entrepreneur community must have looked them up to know more about them through their online presence. It must have been a great feeling for Stellaris team to know they had the right impression going out. And it was a great feeling for ColoredCow team to hear appreciations in the same launch in front of the media of having helped them out when they needed it.