Some people might say that we are obsessed with Perspective. Some might even say that at Webfarm, we think of Perspective with a capital P. Those people would be right.

It may seem obvious or even ridiculous to say that perspective is integral to every step of every project that we undertake. The reason that we explicitly talk about perspective is that each step of each project is considered explicitly from any number of perspectives. Each step in a project has technical, business, political, social, educational, and almost countless other perspectives to consider. The balance between getting bogged down in perspective and effectively considering multiple dimensions of an issue is an art that we are constantly refining.
The fact that we have completed projects and done so effectively gives some credence to this approach and our ability to rise above what could become a quagmire of competing perspectives. Framing the questions in terms other than 'competing' perspectives is a good part of the solution because when you look at the macroscopic goals, every person and every process is or should be working toward the same end.

"If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.". With this in mind, we encourage the artists to view the project through the business lens and the engineers to consider the artists perspective, etc. This approach places a great deal of importance on effective project management, but the yield is strong, healthy development through strong, broad understanding.

One aspect of our technological perspective that has gained strong acceptance across the entire tech community is the availability and utility of standards. The world of standards has changed somewhat in the last few years and this has, in fact, returned the meaning of 'standard' to the idea that open, evolved standards instead of the proprietary, imposed standards that were the race for much of the early computer industry.
Standards such as TCP/IP for network communication and SMTP for exchanging email may seem like trivial examples, but the utility of the Internet is based in large measure on the ubiquity and robustness of these standards along with the more recent standards of HTTP and XML.
We have participated in standards bodies and can testify first hand that the process is excruciating, but necessary.We participated in a profile working group for the Z39.50 body and also a working group of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI).
We believe strongly that the utility and value of standards lies in their simplicity and extensibility. Simplicity and extensibility is key. That is part of the reason that we are very excited about the possibilities in the Dublin Core and XML along with new protocols like XML-RPC.

It is interesting to take the technological patterns like Model-View-Controller and look at them from the business perspective. Ideally, there would always be a clean, one-to-one mapping from business objects to a Model and the business processes would always be clear and well defined enough to translate into code. Viewing the business in terms of technical constructs and viewing the technical in terms of business methodologies is a useful exercise and will save time through increased understanding on both perspectives.