Are We There Yet?

It's true: even simple projects get messy. Christina Wodtke comes clean on Swiss Army knives, the writing on the wall, and the untidy glory of the Boxes and Arrows redesign contest.

Wodtke, Christina. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>Web Design>Project Management>Case Studies

Big Architect, Little Architect

First came the primordial soup. Thousands of relatively simple single-celled web sites appeared on the scene, and each one was quickly claimed by a multi-functional organism called a "webmaster." A symbiotic relationship quickly became apparent. Webmaster fed web site. Web site got bigger and more important. So did the role of the webmaster. Life was good. Then, bad things started to happen. The size and complexity and importance of the web sites began to spiral out of control. Mutations started cropping up. Strange new organisms with names like interaction designer, usability engineer, customer experience analyst, and information architect began competing with the webmaster and each other for responsibilities and rewards. Equilibrium had been punctuated and we entered the current era of rapid speciation and specialization.

Morville, Peter. Argus Center (2000). Articles>Web Design>Interaction Design>Project Management

Five Questions to Ask Your Web Development Team

As a client or manager responsible for a web development project you don't need to know anything about how a standards based web site is created. However you do need to know that your project is addressing these five important issues.

Allsopp, John. Western Civilization (2005). Articles>Web Design>Project Management>Standards

Gantt to Glory: Evolving from Project Management to Successful Web Operations

Is the sheer possession of a PMP intended to be the Holy Grail of successful web projects, known to fail at a startling rate, or simply a way to divorce oneself from whatever outcome may result from the web project?

Podnar, Kristina. Content Wrangler, The (2008). Articles>Web Design>Project Management>Planning

How to Present a Business Case for Web Site Investments

How can you convince others that Web investments are a wise decision in a slow economy?

Costello, Rick. STC Chicago (2003). Articles>Web Design>Project Management>Business Case

Laws of Web Site Management and Digital Branding

We urgently need a quick crash course on web site management; otherwise, connecting with potential customers will become a very tough challenge. Lucky are those who have a unique domain name without the additional baggage of extraneous language, numbers, dashes or slashes. Studies have shown that 90 percent of business names are problematic. These problems are serious issues for achieving higher visibility.

Javed, Naseem. Communication World Bulletin (2004). Articles>Web Design>Project Management>Marketing

Managing a Large Web Page Project  

Web page projects can be completed in minimal time if you have your team's buy-in. You need a team leader that finds creative ways to energize the team and has excellent organizational and communication skills. Standards, spreadsheets, and databases, and a knowledgeable technical and creative group provide essential tools to success. But, enthusiasm and synergy are the key components that make the project work, with upper management behind you all the way. Completion of the project finds excellent bonuses for a job well done!

Ricks, Debra. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Web Design>Project Management

Planning a Web Site Redesign in Six Steps  

True Web site redesigns focus on much more than visuals. Brink and Regenold's redesign process will help technical communicators rethink a site from the ground up.

Brink, Marcia and Michele Regenold. Intercom (2004). Articles>Web Design>Redesign>Project Management

Use Cases Part II: Taming Scope

The use-case model can be a powerful tool for controlling scope throughout a project's life cycle. Because a simplified use-case model can be understood by all project participants, it can also serve as a framework for ongoing collaboration and a visual map of all agreed-upon functionality. Use it to plan, to negotiate, and to prevent scope creep.

Carr, Norm and Tim Meehan. List Apart, A (2005). Articles>Web Design>Project Management

What's the Problem?

One of the biggest problems in creating and delivering a site is how to decide, specify, and communicate exactly what we’re building and why. Use cases can help answer these questions by providing a simple, fast means to decide and describe the purpose of your project. In this quick-reading article, Messieurs Carr and Meehan introduce use cases and their, uh, uses.

Carr, Norm and Tim Meehan. List Apart, A (2005). Articles>Web Design>Project Management

An Eight-Step Implementation Model

The inaccessibility of web content can have a significant impact on the lives of individuals with disabilities. Many people without disabilities are ignorant of the importance of the issue to those who are directly affected. They are also often ignorant of the tremendous benefit that accessible web content can be. Accessible web sites offer independence to individuals with disabilities that would otherwise not have it.

WebAIM (2006). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Project Management

How to Scope an Intranet Release

When developing intranet releases, intranet teams often find themselves very constrained by both time and resources. The challenge then becomes delivering sufficient content and capabilities to meet business and user expectations, within the project constraints. This briefing introduces a simple approach to scoping a release that takes all of these factors into account.

Robertson, James. Step Two (2004). Articles>Web Design>Intranets>Project Management

Your Website is for Your Most Important Customers

Well-managed websites tend to be those that are narrow in their focus. They do a few things really well rather than attempt to do lots and lots of things.

McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2006). Articles>Web Design>Project Management>E Commerce

You Need a Five-Year Plan for Your Website

Websites change the way an organization communicates with its staff, customers, investors and general public. A change in communication is a major shift for the organization. To effectively implement such a change will take time. You need a five-year plan for your website.

McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2003). Articles>Web Design>Planning>Project Management

Twenty Signs You Don’t Want that Web Design Project

Most clients are good clients, and some clients are great clients. But some jobs are just never going to work out well. Herewith, a few indicators that a project may be headed to the toilet.

Zeldman, Jeffrey. Zeldman.com (2008). Articles>Web Design>Project Management>Planning

Setting Priorities

Nearly every company I’ve worked with since becoming a web professional six years ago has lacked an efficient way to decide which things to do first. Put 10 people into a room for an hour, and they’ll surely come up with a wish list a mile long.

Fraser, Janice. Adaptive Path (2002). Articles>Web Design>Project Management>Collaboration

Getting Real About Agile Design

Agile is here to stay. The economic difficulties of the past months have finally put waterfall out of its misery; now more than ever, long requirements phases and vaporous up-front documentation aren’t acceptable. Software must be visible and valuable from the start. For many designers, Agile is already a fact of life (and for those less accustomed, some recommended reading follows at the foot of this article). We are reaching the point where we must either acclimatize or risk being bypassed. The good news is that Agile does allow us to still do the things we hold dear—research, develop a vision, and test and improve our designs—we just need new techniques. Now is the time to get real, and prove design can adapt, if we want to stay relevant in these increasingly unreal times.

Bowles, Cennydd. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Web Design>Agile>Project Management

The Content Conundrum

There’s often an unsettling discrepancy between the stakeholder approved wireframes and visual comps and the actual product in production. What you see in those environments is sometimes a far cry from those polished wireframes and those shiny, pixel-perfect visualizations that were filled with placeholder content (such as lorem ipsum text, dummy copy, and image blocks). What you’re seeing in production environments now holds the real content. The imagery doesn’t support the interactions, is meaningless, useless, or worse, contradictory to the design intent. The copy, headers, and labels are unclear, too long, too short, or simply irrelevant. What happened?

Detzi, Christopher. Boxes and Arrows (2009). Articles>Web Design>Project Management

Websites: Designed by Dogs, Managed by Cats 

Websites are generally designed by dogs. There’s a lot of optimism. The dogs look at the website and think of it as an endless attic. No matter how much stuff you into it, there’s always room for more. The dogs approach each design step with a ‘have gigabytes, must fill’ enthusiasm. And then cats have to manage the website. The dogs let everyone publish and the cats are certainly not going to review all this stuff. The dogs created an architecture where everyone can find everything and now nobody can find anything. The cats shake their heads.

McGovern, Gerry. I Heart Tech Docs (2007). Articles>Web Design>Project Management