FatPurple

This article discusses Sapient’s approach of using intense, full-day workshops to bring together stakeholders and project teams to discuss and define system requirements. This type of approach is very useful on large projects with numerous stakeholders, designers, developers, and managers. Having developers attend, and take an active role, in this early phase offers numerous benefits.  It often takes weeks, or even months – especially on Federal Government projects – to line up enough meetings to thoroughly define requirements.  This approach allows much of it to happen in one day. Not to mention the intangible positives, like stakeholder buy-in and team building, that these workshops offer.

Improving Communication between Customers and Developers

Based on Vault’s 2010 Prestige Ratings

There’s no real surprise here at the top of the list. McKinsey once again lands in the top spot – as they do on most consulting rankings (e.g. management consulting) based on prestige. The rest of the top 15 is made up mainly of firms that have huge stakes in U.S. Federal Government contracting. I’m a bit surprised to see Accenture below Gartner, but their scores were very close, so it’s splitting hairs at that point. Sapient is the only true Web consulting/interactive firm to make the list. Curiously Razorfish – which based on the last data I saw – outpaces Sapient in total revenue making it the larget interactive agency/firm.

This data comes from Advertising Age’s 2005 rankings. Yes it’s a bit old, but still interesting to see how the large Web companies stack up. Some might be surprised to see New York firms outnumber California firms on a technology related consulting list, but keep in mind that much of this business is rooted in traditional advertising agencies that have morphed or spawned “interactive” agencies.

The Top 50 Interactive Agencies

Ranked by U.S. Revenue from Interactive Work

Notes: Figures are in millions of U.S dollars. An asterisk (*) indicates figures are Ad Age estimates. 1 Formerly Carat Interactive. Published May 1, 2006.