Some of you already know, but this is the official announcement. As of the end of February (maybe a week earlier), I will no longer be doing long, onsite contracts for a single client. I will be moving to doing shorter and more varied work for clients that are closer to sharing my vision of how the work I do and the services I provide should be done.
I've already signed one contract and have a couple of possibilities on the boil. Fingers crossed.
My decision is based on a number of factors:
- working long, onsite contracts isn't too different to being an employee, and that isn't what I want
- working for the sorts of clients that want you to do long, onsite contracts often gets you involved with large organisations with bureaucratic structures and command and control mindsets, and that isn't what I want
- working for these sorts of clients and in this way prevents me from developing acidlabs from being little more than a name to being the place to come when you want your organisation and its knowledge workers to work the best way with the best tools and processes that they can, and that isn't what I want
What I do want is to be able to work with innovative, open-minded clients whose vision of the world is akin to mine. I want to work largely away from government (I've been there or worked to government for too long). I want to build the knowledge worker-focussed work of the business while continuing the information architecture and user experience work.
So, if you think you might have a need for some of he things I do, drop me a line or give me a call (the number is in the sidebar).
I've actually just had validation on this decision. I'm onsite at my last "old" client. A presentation was given to senior management today to show them the prototype of the application we've been working on. The prototype has been put together after months of research into user needs, several workshops with the end users to determine what they actually need and a hell of a lot of work on building something that actually works and is actually aimed at improving people's jobs and the service they deliver.
That project, when launched later this year, will provide a bunch of people with an easy to use, well-structured tool to access the knowledge and information they need to use every day in order to provide quality services to their clients.
Senior management were not especially welcoming of our efforts, labelling it risky and not aligned with their vision for the organisation. They don't want staff to have input into the tools they provide them and they don't want end users driving development of applications. Rather, they want applications that meet senior management's vision delivered to end users and change management and business process reengineering to get the message out.
Transitions, indeed.
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