Someone pointed me in the direction of the interactionarchitect.com site and in particular the article there on "The battle of the disciplines in designing interactive systems". There are many articles there on usability issues which are very good and thought provoking.

The articles sets out saying:

"...interactive system design companies have started to sell the advantages of multidisciplinary development teams. They use metaphors suggesting a harmonious group of people with different backgrounds working together towards the common goal of making a great product.

The reality is that these multidisciplinary teams invest a lot of their time and energy in a non-productive battle for power and influence in project decisions, in disagreeing about procedures and methods, in misunderstanding each other's contribution, in working besides or even against each other, etc."

Ring any bells? I would imagine so. Fortunately the article does go on to suggest some ways to overcome the challenges which I would certainly agree with:

"The starting point to overcome the battle of the disciplines could be a Zen-like understanding that no discipline on its own can win the battle without losing the design war.

To create successful interactive systems we need creative design AND intelligent programming AND optimal usability AND sound business justification AND proper project management etc. One competence dominating the development process compromises reaching that goal. Even project managers can no longer fully control the process of developing interactive systems. They face a difficult transition from a controling and directive role to a coaching, facilitating and moderating role.

Here are some ideas that can help to create successful multidisciplinary teams:

- Create a multidisciplinary team at the definition stage of projects
- Create project teams that allow different disciplines to work together on a daily basis
- Focus on a common overall goal that is made explicit to the team
- Organize the development process around shared work products and milestones, e.g. use cases, object models, content architectures, target group definitions, domain models
- Select communicative team players with a multidisciplinary frame of mind, not blind experts "

The full article can be found at http://www.interactionarchitect.com/testimonies/testimony20000425shd.htm

Martyn

Thanks for positive comments on the site. You ain't seen anything yet in terms of content and functionality that we'll be adding. This will include proper % accuracy search results ranking, browse options as well as straight keyword searches, e-mail alert functions (i.e. the site will tell you when something relevant is added) etc. etc. There'll also be a conferences calendar, details of e-business training courses and a whole lot of other things. It all takes time, but we'll get there...

I agree with all your points on project management (have you looked at the project managment forum on this site as well?). I think as the industry matures more standards and accepted ways of working will become apparent. In the meantime, one of the strongest weapons that can be employed in the defense of a proposed solution is hard, empirical data and a proven track record i.e. you can back up what you say with fact and proven experience. The industry is still comparatively young and is still very poor at being properly accountable (e.g. through more standardised web performance analytics). This means there is too much room for subjective opinion, which is why marketing directors still get away with imposing 500k Flash intro movies on their site visitors... ;)