Switching back: further reflections on an interesting post

I’ve been reflecting further on the article Strategy vs. Planning, Cone of Uncertainty, Context Switching I shared last week, and particularly the section “Context Switching and how it kills Projects”.?

I’m pretty sure we have all experienced the distraction and frustration caused by being asked to switch between tasks or projects because priorities have changed, or a decision was made to go in a different direction.? It can stop you being able to focus on or complete your work adding to deadline pressures, and it can result in higher amounts of stress and job dissatisfaction. That’s context switching.

What the article does is highlight some of the key ways context switching impacts on your Tech Development teams.?

Specifically their ability to meet targets or schedules for critical website updates, how interruptions whilst developing or tweaking coding can result in the need to start again - from scratch. And the significant delays to the implementation of identified site improvements because the goal posts keep changing.

It doesn’t just affect the Tech Development team either.?

It has knock-on effects for SEO teams and their projects too, adding significantly to the backlogs and silos that already exist for their organic marketing channel optimisation.

And whilst we know that C-suite executives appreciate the critical roles these teams play, they may not have an understanding of the true costs of context switching on those teams.? Because Website Development and SEO remain (for many) unfathomable, mystical disciplines, with magicians overseeing and executing them.

The article doesn’t deliver the C-Suite a better understanding of Tech Development or SEO but it does provide 5 tips to adopt, which should reduce the frequency and impacts of context switching on your teams:-

• Clear Roadmaps
• Reduce Requests
• Ruthlessly Prioritise,?
• Mandatory Meetings, and?
• Scope Requirements.?

It’s worth reading this article to see how you might implement these tips.

It’s also worth discovering SEO Automation tools.??

These have arrived on the market in the last couple of years specifically designed to help enterprise businesses reduce Tech and SEO implementation costs and delays. By fully automating the manual tasks that typically sit in a silo or task queue for months at a time, these solutions accelerate speed-to-market, and reduce the demands and pressures on tech or development teams.

And what that affords your Tech Development and SEOs is more time to focus on the initiatives that need their expertise, and a greater flexibility to respond and react should the need to context switch arise.

#Reducestress?

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#organicsearch

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#Techdevelopment?

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@Monika Ortega

@Trudy Allen

@Robert Mighall