Questionnaire

Strategic

How a company’s work is guided by its vision

• Mission Statement: Does the company have a general ethos or vision that guides what you do?
• Values: What are the values/guiding principles that started the company? How often do you adhere to them, and how have they evolved or changed?
• Culture: How are the values manifested in the corporate culture? What do you do to foster and encourage that culture, and what do you do to prevent its opposite? How open to change and innovation is the company? Is employee solution building encouraged?
• Corporate Responsibility: Do you engage with non-profits or address sustainability?
• The future: Where does the company see its growth? Any particular sectors or industries? What fields does the company draw inspiration from?

• Competition: Whom do you see as your competition? How do you set yourself apart from other design firms?
• Direction: Moving forward, where is the company heading – areas you haven’t explored that you’d like to via clients, disciplines, techniques? What industries, clients, projects, collaborations are you looking for?
• Trends: What trends, clients, projects are you looking to avoid? Any other trends are they interested in addressing?

Operational

How organizational work is done

• Management: How much direction do they provide? Do they get involved in project work and business development?
• Numbers: How many employees, and how much management?
• Breakdown: What is the break down of staff per discipline? What is the ratio of full-time vs. contract? mgt. vs. staff? How much is internal and how much external contract staff, and who are the contractors?? Do contract staff become permanent, and if so, long does it take?
• Growth: How fast has growth been?
• Skill set: Are you looking for any particular skill set? What areas or skills do you succeed, and where are you lacking? How are you going to address that?
• Education: How is continuing education and training handled and encouraged? Is there a library (real or virtual)? Are there magazine subscriptions, conferences, each man to his own?
• Organizations, associations and alliances: what organizations does the company belong to? What relationships with other companies/partners exist? Any alliances?

• Origin: How do you get your contracts? What's the percentages for RFP, referrals, repeat biz, etc.
• Repeat: How many clients are repeat clients? Are you looking to deepen existing relationships (i.e. more work with existing clients) or just continue what you’re doing? Do you ever say no to a client? Why or why not?
• Longest: Who has been your longest client, and why?
• Good/bad: Who has been your best client, and why? Who has been a bad client, and why - i.e. an example of a bad client and why (you don't have to name names - just why it didn't work)

Tactical

How client work is done, day to day

• Job title and description: (provided by employer)
• Hours: What are typical hours like? Is there overtime or work on weekends? Is there an opportunity for travel?
• Compensation: What is the salary? Any bonus compensation structure?

• Types of contracts: What are the projects like - web design, strategy etc.?
• Duration: How long are most projects? How many are repeat?
• Number: How many projects do you do a year? How many are at the same time?
• 'Normal': How many projects are normal and what is a normal project for you?
• Duration: How long are most projects? How many are repeat? How long does it take to move from presales to SOW?
• Client Support: What support are clients given - any materials, like a roadmap of what projects are like so you can manage expectations? How are they informed of changes, progress? Is there a dedicated project manager for each project?
• Knowledge Management: How do you capture your corporate memory, keep track of which projects you've done and for whom? How is saving your corporate memory embedded in your processes?

• Formal process: How do you usually do your work? What is your process like, especially pre-sales? Eg. are there functional specs for work? Do your sales staff have and tech background?
• Methodologies: What methodologies are used, and why? How are requirements gathered - do you collect them? Why or why not? How do you collect them? Are strategy, requirements engineering and user research built into the process, projects and the company itself? Why or why not? What kinds of user research is typically done? How do you ensure that you incorporate RE, UX, and KM into the process throughout the duration of the project?
• Collaboration: How much interdisciplinary collaboration occurs (not just 'IT guy attended a meeting at the beginning of the project'?) Are projects interdisciplinary in nature?
• Resources: What resources have you used to do client work and unify the company - how many of the following items do you have:
  • Intranet, wiki, project specific extranets? What software do you use for each of these?
  • Who maintains them, and when?