Make everyone great at talking to clients

The Agile Studio likes to keep things simple when it comes to its organization. They don't always default to middlemen like account or project managers. Instead, the team members are tech-savvy and great at talking with clients.

Initially, at Moze, we tried to make a model work where project managers were the sole interface to the client. However, this model didn't work well. Those who were doing the actual work, whether a designer or a developer, had assistance in filtering requests but felt the "lost in translation" effect in terms of the quality of interaction with the client.

Things have improved significantly since we put designers and developers directly in contact with the client as the "public" part of the team. Interaction is typically facilitated (in our case, by one of us partners in the studio), but it mainly focuses on general organizational issues.

During the project's execution, the conversation with the client becomes more operational and is handled more by the specialist. This approach is not always easy to manage because it requires defining a policy — more or less explicitly — with the client to give the designer or developer time to work instead of receiving continuous communications.

For us, it worked to establish recurring meeting times, such as every two weeks on Mondays, with a one-hour meeting dedicated to major communications and project demos. The rest of the time is devoted to actual work. Specific communications are still allowed and encouraged but always in line with the schedule.

In our case, clients who choose to work with us have, at a minimum, a certain familiarity with the innovation or technology sector. Consequently, they feel comfortable communicating directly with the specialists working on the project.

Though this direct interaction needs to be handled carefully to avoid messing with the work, it helps cut out unnecessary back-and-forths.

This approach isn't for everyone. It works best when the client's setup is lean, too. When communication can flow directly without running in circles. It's perfect when the client has a go-to person on their side, so you don't have to constantly answer to a bunch of different people. If you're working with bigger companies, checking if a project leader can help filter and organize everyone's requests is a good idea.