About David Hobbs

Not many people spend a whole lot of time thinking about website transformations, but I do.  I look at transformations a bit differently than others, by looking inclusively at the problem and being strongly pattern driven, while keeping a very pragmatic eye to finding an approach to meet your goals. This helps you get control of your website transformation.

Inclusive

Someone needs to be looking at all the aspects of your transformation that will impact your success.  As I define in the Website Migration Handbook v2, a website migration is the transfer of content, sites / sections, functionality, team, templates, information architecture, and relationships from one platform to another.  I make sure to look at these and other factors that contribute to your success.

Pattern Driven

When I was at the World Bank, I bumped into many web page problems that everyone said wasn't possible to detect automatically.  By writing scripts based on patterns I discovered, I was able to find and report many issues before users found them.  This is just a tactical example, but with migrations finding patterns is essential, especially for large ones.  With a large government agency, I was able to first define types of sites and then classify them by patterns so they could plan phases to roll out their 1,000+ websites.  In addition to analyzing content for patterns, I carefully define (not "gather") requirements based on the underlying needs stakeholders are reporting (even if they aren't explicitly stated).

Pragmatic & Proven

I want your website transformation to be a success, and not define some glorious strategy that can't be implemented.  Similarly, I'm not tied to a particular tool or methodology, so I'm not blinded to thinking there's only one way to approach a problem.  Also, I have successfully guided very lean teams as well as very large bureaucracies.

For more information on me, also see: