Sometimes you need to run into something to realise you were missing it. It's a curious, happy sensation, a moment of surprise and rediscovery. Over the past half year at Bravoure, I have found myself back at the Playground that Agencies and Project Based Work represent, and what an incredible joy it has been! There is just so much space for serious growth, exploration, fun and discovery.
The difference between product based and project based is well understood but having been here for a little bit now and looking back at many years of Product based work, there are some realisations and learnings to share as well as a chance to more clearly define the environment and rules that make a workplace a true Playground, and why it's such an insanely great thing.
Defining Playground Work
An actual, physical playground, as design for kids, sets boundaries within which you can create, discover and compete. It allows you to build motor skills in a reasonably save environment; getting bruised is almost expected, getting seriously injured almost impossible. You can follow the accepted rules of the materials or define your own as you go. It's a place that doesn't change, but you change and therefor what you can in it changes. It's an exciting place that you want to go back to, and it's social; it's almost always better to play together and it's the best when you are redefining rules as a group, making your own games that continue to fit as the group evolves. Every time you change the rules - try something new - there is a rush of excitement. Every playground is different, but samish enough for you to apply your rules to it. Playground offer other things, maybe there's a slide, or a sandbox, and we can even involve the world beyond the playground in our game - although this does increase the risk, but it also vastly increases the possibilities. And lastly, playgrounds are intrinsically motivating. We don't have to tell kids - nor adults - to go and play when exposed to playgrounds.
Good projects, Playground Work, is just like the actual playground. There is a pitch to be won and to win it, you'll have to compete within the boundaries set down in the request. Within these boundaries you can apply the rules and techniques that you as a company - as a group - are familiar with and know you can play well with. The same goes for the work you do once the pitch is won. It's relatively save, losing one pitch is the equivalent of a bruise, while ruining a project might be considered breaking an arm, it's bad, but unless you ruin all your projects at once, you will be okay. More than okay, you'll still have learned a ton. Every pitch, every project, requires reinventing the rules and techniques you apply. Doing a WordPress content platform was fine 15 years ago but you'd better add AI, AR and PWA as part of a wholistic strategy with clear KPIs for your next project if you wish to stay relevant ánd if you wish to keep it interesting. You evolve your game, change your rules and improve your skills. And each time you add something to your stack, you bring that along to the next project, you upgrade your playground.
To summarise, Playground Work is defined by:
clearly defined goals and boundaries
relative safety, but taking risk makes the outcome better
opportunities to learn from successes ánd mistakes
collaboration with colleagues, client and end user
long term relevance
competitiveness
Product vs Playground
Playground work - project based work - is very different from product based work. When we work on a product, we typically define our stack once, and then only evolve within that stack unless there is serious pressure to add to it, and moving to something entirely new represents a massive investment and risk that regularly results in entire companies going under. There is no clear cut moment where the product is "done" - how often do you hear a product team say that they are "finished" and ready to move to the next thing? This makes it much harder to stop and look at the landscape, to decide what to add next, what thing you want to try.
In contrast, when we do projects, we can try new things. If they turn out not so great, we just don't apply them again. When working on a product, once you apply something, removing it is probably going to be more expensive than leaving it. In other words; you might be stuck with your "bad" decision for a long time. This means you miss out on the excitement of the new.
When you throw a new project at a group of people, there is the new project motivation. Most developers love to work on "greenfield projects", but we all know that after a few months, maybe a year, we have reached the dreaded brownfield phase. When we do Playground Work, a major challenge is to complete the work fast so that we are able to move on the next shiny object. This isn't laziness or sloppiness, it's openly admitting that doing something new is great, that we learn more when we try often, and that we can expand our rules and skills faster if we jump into next things often.
Playground Work on a daily basis at Bravoure
At Bravoure, most work qualifies as Playground Work, and our culture actively contributes to this. There are small expressions of creativity everywhere you look and people experiment with everything (just the other day we experimented with copying our faces with the photocopier and we now have 2 collages of everyones faces hanging on the doors).
Professionally we are constantly juggling several new things. All teams are testing new stuff on a constant basis. Team members have their own little pet projects to try out the latest page transition framework, create 3D versions of websites, play around with object recognition or create small AI tools to automatically generate content inside the Craft CMS. All done outside of work hours, out of personal interest, but we translate these things into the real, apply the to the work we do, offer it to clients or turn it into internal projects because that creates a cycle of playing, seeing your work become real, and being motivated to play more.
What has impressed me most at Bravoure is the way we turn every client request inside out to do something more than "just" build a new platform. Our strategy-first approach by nature turns a simple ask into a fantastic game. A client will ask for a new site or identity and we will of course deliver it, but not before fully understanding who they are, what they stand for and how, strategically, their proposition is, or should be, translated into the digital world. Doing so we - undeliberately - turn each project into Playground Work; we compete, we make project (and client) goals are clear, and we find opportunities to try new things that will benefit us, the client ánd the user.
I am immensely grateful and happy to be working at Bravoure, being surrounded by a crazy, talented team and doing such amazing work, redefining the ourselves and the work we do constantly, the one thing that is really making us tick is: Playground Work.