Music is a common bond for most Small Box employees. Most of us play at least one instrument and if not have strong opinions about those who do. We have an internal project, MusicalFamilyTree.com, that keeps us connected to our music roots. At one point or another some of us thought, foolishly!, that we might go pro with music. Instead we have funneled that energy into designing, building and marketing websites. I’ve found there are a number of crossover lessons with these two seemingly disparate disciplines.

I grew up recording on cassette 4 Tracks with very limited equipment. A 4 track was just that- 4 audio tracks to fit all of your guitars, bass, drums, vocals, keyboards etc on to. But I learned how to maximize that constraint, make the best of it. I would record to three tracks, bounce down to one, record to two, bounce to one, etc until I had a wonderful wall of lo-fi sound that came pretty close to the thing I heard in my head.

As I got older I had access to real studios and better gear including 8, 16 and even 24 track machines. These things are as big as washing machines. But you were still limited to how many tracks you had and tape was expensive ($100-200 for 30 minutes). You also had to be careful about wearing out the tape during recording and mixing. Each take and mix mattered. This forces you to focus and make choices.

When computer recording came along it offered a world with few constraints- no real limit of tracks, no tape to wear out, etc. But that doesn’t mean the albums are actually better. It used to be a band would record an album, mix, master and press it all within 30-60 days. Now it is usually 1-2 years. This while we live in a world where you can record a song in the morning and have it posted in MP3 format to a website for anyone to hear by the evening. Think of all the albums that were never recorded since the band was spending years tweaking something that was already finished- hello Axl Rose and “Chinese Democracy”.

The limitlessness realm we are approaching with technology is fun and exciting but let’s remember the technology itself is not an end, it’s a tool. As we adopt new devices, interfaces and functionality we have to ask- Does this actually improve the experience? Is it adding or removing value?

To the Web.

Since the Web has so few limits it’s difficult to artificially impose constraints but I am beginning to see that we have no choice. In order to deliver a website/app for a client on time/budget requires discipline from both parties. This is especially challenging when your medium is perhaps the least disciplined in the history of mediums! Anything goes with the Web, for better or worse.

The easiest/laziest thing to do when faced with multiple choices is to not make a choice, leave every door open as long as possible letting in all kinds of distracting ideas. The Web is a world of a million ideas and making decisions hurt, at first you feel like you are stepping on ants for no good reason. It’s easy to start second guessing- “maybe the original logo was better”, “maybe we should have added a blog”, “maybe we should have gone with green?”, “maybe we need to add ‘FAQ’ to the main navigation”, etc. These kinds of decisions, often ones that can be changed later if really needed, can drag a project down. They hurt morale and momentum. They stop the next album from ever getting into production.

So the web is limitless but time and money is not. This is a good thing! Endless resources are the root of all waste. Limited resources create discipline. For a project to be successful all stakeholders must agree on and embrace the existing constraints. This doesn’t have to mean a defined scope of work as much as an understanding of budget, timeline and goals. Scope will change. It’s just a guess anyway until you dig into the project. But just like recording you only have so much tape, so much time and lots of tracks to lay down. So let’s embrace constraints, see them as needed chalk lines and get the job done on time and on budget!

Related reading: “Rework” by 37 Signals (this book and my time in Austin for SXSWi greatly influenced this post).