Navy Federal Credit Union
As a Web Producer for the Digital Media team at Navy Federal Credit Union, I supervised a team of Web Designers to maintain the Credit Union’s public-facing website. Many times, I managed special technical projects that were beyond the normal scope of the Web team. For some projects, I laid out specifications; for others, I rolled up mysleeves to do production work.
Team Process & Improvement
During my time on the Digital Media team, I helped to streamline team production processes. We knew it was important to have a good process methodology, clean coding standards, and an effiecient way to handle our projects and provide QA for all jobs.
At this time, the NFCU website was a standard HTML website that had to be manually updated in the code. There was nothing in place for QA except to check everthing on the site manually.
I was instrumental in sourcing and implementing 3rd party software to automate the testing of 100 quality and compliance metrics and eliminate the need for additional team staffing positions. I also implemented a web analytics solution to begin to produce customized reports for several departments so they could have visibility into relevant traffic and activity.
Digital Media Style Guide and Best Practices
Building a repository for best practices, team processes, and collective wisdom
Our manager gave us a big initiative for 100% accuracy — no mistakes and perfect syntax (this was back in the day when it really mattered) — so we worked hard to define and follow good processes. There was no reference for our best practices, process methodology, and collective wisdom. And, if one person knew the background on something, and then left the team…knowledge would be lost. I created a Intranet that functioned as a “team wiki” to:
- capture style and coding topics
- definitions
- use cases and usage rules, with current examples
- code samples to copy and paste
- examples and methodology on solving technical issues
- implementation tips and steps
- website standards
- internal content inventory
- workflow and publishing processes and checklists, as well as team responsibilities.
- statistics and reports
As our team processes grew or a new component was defined, I updated and documented the site. It was our living style guide and knowledge repository.
Example from NFCU Digital Media Team Style Guide
“Working with Janet was a rewarding experience. Janet remained detail oriented, while managing the time and work load of the remainder of her team. I could always count on her to get the job done well and within the deadline with a smile on her face. Additionally, Janet was a great problem solver. She always provided options when available.”
Locations Database Redesign & Google Maps
Graduating from a list of branches to Google Maps Integration
Navy Federal was growing and expanding with new branches everywhere. It is highly important that members be able to find the nearest branch.
The Website had a poorly formatted list of branches served up from a database, but, we wanted to give our members more. The locations pages needed to look like they were really a part of the same website and make it easy for members to find and map directions to a branch or office.
I worked with the Web team to integrate Google maps into the NFCU Web site. Next, I worked with stakeholders to map out a restructuring of the locations database for better control of the data, and to lay ground work for automated voice systems later. Then, in order to have all formatting controlled by css files accessible by the Web group, I worked with an in-house development team to spec out and implement the changes to the database and the code that surfaces the information.
RightNow Knowledge-Repository Integration
Ingegrating a knowledge-base to reduce member calls
The Correspondence group at Navy Federal found RightNow, an “Ask me a Question” functionality and knowledge-base solution, an extremely valuable in-house tool to answer members questions. They wanted to expose this content to the organization’s public website. If members can find answers to their questions without having to email or call in, this could save the credit union money as well as provide more efficient service to their members.
This project wasted months thrashing around about all kinds of integration issues. After solving potential security issues and concerns, the next largest problem was the customization work required to expose only the features the NFCU Web team wanted, and to allow stylesheets to update the “Look & Feel”. As is often the case, when it comes to HTML and css work, even the most senior developers don’t have a clue. This was indeed the case and their estimates leapt into months.
Finally, to get the project underway, I convinced the project owners and managers to allow me to do the customization work. It took a good couple of week’s work— not the months of the developers’ estimates!