Assets & resources
Goodies for your exercises and project plans.
Includes
- Eleven Logos
- Eleven team portraits and avatars
Intro
Eleven is a boutique design and development studio based in Montreal. Founded in 2008, we’re a scrappy bunch focused on using our powers for good. We care about our future and are working hard to build a practice that is progressive and sustainable in our fast-changing future. We refuse to fall into the same growth-obsessed traps as our unsustainable industry peers. Our strength comes from our big-picture perspective and that perspective reveals technical and creative opportunities that others overlook.
The team
Disclaimer: Any similarities between these characters and real-life people are completely coincidental.
Agency owner
Jess Owens
she/her
10 years experience
Previously: Art Director at high-end agency
Qualities
- Communication style: Director, Relator
- Dry sense of humour; likeable
- Sometimes skips the details during conversation
- High standard of quality
- Visionary: always chasing new ideas
- Can be overly sensitive and critical at times
- Quick decision maker
- Values hard work and rewards it
Quirks
- Likes to send texts outside of work hours
- Emails and messages may seem harsh or brusque
- Will surprise teammates with lavish thank yous (e.g., trip or new laptop)
Business Developer
Tyler Durgen
she/her
4 years experience
Previously: Business development for fast-paced marketing firm
Qualities
- Communication style: Director, Socializer
- Super funny and thoughtful
- Competitive and action oriented
- Tends to be a little aggressive and impatient
- Suggests solutions before getting all the facts
- Super reasonable and will back off when presented with a business case
Quirks
- Often shows up unexpectedly and dumps info on the team
- An open book: will tell you everything about personal life
- Comes to work when sick
UX/Research
Drew Kusuma
she/her
7 years experience
Previously: Policy researcher for federal government
Qualities
- Communication style: Thinker
- Analytical and detail oriented
- Quiet and extremely kind
- Tends to be a bit stubborn or argumentative when advocating for research
- Perfectionist; extremely thorough
- Needs people to focus on the details and wants to go through all the data with you
- Can sometimes take a bit longer to finish tasks
- A little long winded when explaining details
Quirks
- Loves cats with monocles (seriously, any cat with an eyeglass means hysterical laughter)
- Works late and puts extra effort in even when asked not to
- Sometimes hijacks meetings with long explanations of latest findings
Code
- Basic HTML/CSS
Product Designer
Avery Walsh
she/her
4 years experience
Previously: Product Designer for a successful startup
Qualities
- Communication style: Socializer, Relator
- Gregarious and outgoing
- Tries to make sure everyone is getting along
- Great at getting people to focus on big picture
- Not always great at prioritizing tasks
- Sometimes doesn’t respond to email
- May change mind about project decisions and forget to let others know
Quirks
- Often shows up late to meetings
- Hates when people come to work sick
- Loves to teach the team new design concepts
Code
- Basic HTML/CSS
- Very rudimentary Javascript
Front End Designer & Developer
Bailey Cho
she/her
2 years experience
Previously: Front-end designer for another digital agency
Qualities
- Communication style: Relator
- Very shy and thoughtful; won’t always speak up
- Avoids conflict and confrontation
- Meticulous with code
- Always on time with deliverables; very reliable
- A bit abrupt or awkward in conversation
Quirks
- Doesn’t like to be interrupted while working
- Will shut down if perceiving criticism or threat
- LOVES virtual reality games. Like a lot.
Code
- HTML/CSS/Javascript
- Basic PHP
Back End Developer
Harley
she/her
4 years experience
Previously: Full stack developer at a financial technology startup
Qualities
- Communication style: Thinker, Socializer
- Very talkative about processes in social settings; loves to educate
- Extremely detail oriented and methodical
- May question the process if it doesn’t align with her vision
- Dry sense of humour
- Loves to solve functionality problems by working through them with the team
- Won’t ask for help even when swamped with work
Quirks
- Hates meetings and will avoid them as much as possible
- Loves to go to punk rock shows
- Sometimes forgets to wear deodorant to work
Code
- Python
- PHP
- A little of HTML/CSS/Javascript
- A touch of Ruby
- A bit of Swift
Content Strategist
Cameron Okenla
she/her
4 years experience
Previously: Copywriter at social media platform company
Qualities
- Communication style: Socializer, Relator
- Warm and outgoing
- Extremely fast, high-quality output
- Likes to see all communication in writing
- Prefers to be surrounded by people; works better in shared spaces
- Can get distracted by surroundings occasionally
- Talks excitedly and isn’t always aware that others want to speak up
Quirks
- Likes to draw conversation out of less social peers at work
- Devoted to helping others, leading her to forget about herself
- Gets severe migraines that result in occassional sick days
Quality Assurance Tester
Erin Bettler
she/her
2 years experience
Previously: Army medic overseas
Qualities
- Communication style: Director, Thinker
- Observant and opinionated
- Detail focused
- Can sometimes get lost in the details and forget the bigger picture
- Tends to point out criticisms very openly
- Strategic problem solver
- Tests assumptions
- Can come across as critical or superior
Quirks
- Loves to talk about previous work stories (tales of war from time overseas)
- Is colour blind
- Often disappears during work hours (you find out because of anxiety)
Company goals
Clients
- No more incoming projects that only consist of a marketing site or brand
- Partner with a client in an advanced science like biotechnology or astrophysics
- Find long-term partnerships that can potentially span multiple projects and years
Sales/service
- Reduce the active client load from 21 to 10–15 (drop to 15 and work down from here)
- Only bring on one qualified client per quarter
- Stop taking clients and projects with budgets smaller than our current Revenue per Client need
Culture
- Make 1-on-1 meetings more frequent and consistent
- Implement mandatory vacation days
- Experiment with client-free Fridays
Operations
- Maintain the current team size, except…
- Add a project manager to the team
- Phase out hourly time tracking
Financial
- Increase the average level of engagement between the acceptable and target minimum level of engagement range ($96K-$180K/yr) for new clients (more below).
- Increase revenue without increasing team size past 1
- Increase team salaries
Expertise
- Implement machine learning or artificial intelligence in at least one project this year
- Design and implement a large-scale cross-platform design system from scratch for a client
- Get comfortable with developing React applications
Fun
- Go on at least two company retreats this year
- Build in bi-weekly learning sessions
- Host a community event around a creative topic (not directly work-related)
The numbers
Values | Description | Actual | Goal |
---|---|---|---|
Full-time employees (FTE) | The total number of full-time employees that work in your organization. | 8 | 9 |
Full-time billable employees | Total number of employees that work for you whose time can be billed to clients. E.g., Non billable are often sales or accounting. Note: Keep PM billable when possible. | 6 | 7 |
Average salary | The average annual salary of full-time employees in your organization. Tip: Ignore any unusually high or low outliers. | $60,000 | $70,000 |
Active clients (NoC) | This is the number of active clients using up your team‘s capacity over a year. | 21 | 10 |
Billable hours per week | The number of hours you can bill to a client over a week. | 32 | 30 |
Client load | The ideal number of clients per teammate. | 4 | 3 |
Time off | All paid holidays plus sick time and vacation in a year | 3 weeks | 4 weeks |
Total annual revenue (TAR) | The total amount of income your organization receives within a fiscal year. | $880,000 | $1,350,000 |
Total annual expenses (TAE) | The amount of expenses leaving your organization each year (including salaries, materials, equipment, professional development, taxes). | $860,000 | $891,000 |
Profit | The amount of money leftover after all expenses, taxes, and salaries are deducted. | 2% | TBD |
Revenue per full-time employee (RpFTE) | The amount of revenue your organization generates per year divided by the number of full-time employees. Aka the amount of money a company should make to sustain a company of its size (not the amount of money each staff member needs to generate). TAR ÷ FTE = RpFTE | $110,000 | $150,000 |
Revenue per client (RCl) | Revenue per client tells you how much revenue each client should generate your organization to meet your annual revenue goals combined with your ideal number of clients. (FTE × RpFTE) ÷ NoC = RCl | $41, 904 | $135,000 |