The design/development life cycle

The design/development life cycle

Introduction

When you are put in charge of a project to create a web site, you can use the project management process to aid you in controlling the main elements of the project—schedule, costs, and performance risks. As project manager, you should start the project management process by creating realistic objectives for the web site and establishing the scope of the work required to produce it.

Design/development projects

The project team both designs and develops a web site

A design/development project to build a web site is one in which a project team both designs and develops the site, rather than being introduced to it at the production or testing stage. Such a project comprises five stages—business process/functionality design, technology/architecture design, implementation/development, pilot/parallel, and cutover/live.

Business process/functionality design

You should select the members of the project team at the business process/functionality design stage of the project management cycle. At this stage, you should determine what effect you want the web site to have. You should also determine a process that will fulfill stakeholders' expectations for the finished site. Stakeholders are those people who have either a business or personal interest in the project's end result.

The end result of this stage should be two important documents

The end result of this stage should be the production of two important documents—the business requirements document, a report that identifies the customers requirements, and the scope matrix document, a spreadsheet that outlines the scope—or size—of the project. The scope matrix document is used to organize the project's structure.

Technology/architecture design

You should refine the scope of the project and plan the design of the web site at the technology/architecture design stage. You should involve all team members to determine how the project's objectives will best be met. The project team should determine the specific resources required to complete the project and estimate the time it will take to create a preliminary web site. The appropriate stakeholders should approve the team's plans at this stage.

The end result of this stage should be the completion of the technical architecture document, which should contain the design and formal specifications of the web site. The budget should be fine-tuned to include a section for the design and formal specifications because they can often cause the project scope to increase, which, if not controlled, can have a detrimental effect on the outcome of the project.

Implementation/development

At this stage, the team should start to develop the web site according to the project plan. This includes acquiring all necessary resources, remaining properly focused on the task, resolving any conflicts, and maintaining contact with stakeholders. You should monitor the project for any signs of deviation from the plan at this stage. If you notice the scope of the project increasing, you should take quick steps to address the situation. For example, you may have to reschedule the project, modify resources, or put a firm limit on the scope. Any changes at this stage must be referred back to the technology/architecture stage and ratified before they are implemented.

Pilot/parallel

At this stage of the project management cycle, you should begin inspecting and testing the web site. Before you roll out a new site, you should ensure that it has as few bugs—or coding errors—as possible. This should involve testing the following:

• links—you should ensure all the links on your site are functioning. This includes hot links that are interrelated, that is when changes on one page affect other pages.

• various browsers—your web site may have functionality that is not supported by some older browsers, so you should ensure that your site displays in as many browsers as possible

• e-commerce site failure and corruption—you should check thoroughly to ensure that any e-commerce aspects of your site are functioning correctly

• heavy traffic—you should ensure that your servers can cope with large numbers of simultaneous users

• different connection speeds—you should ensure that all potential web site users can download your site's content reasonably quickly, regardless of their connection speed

When testing your site, you should employ a standard testing methodology, which is the set of procedures that your testing team performs each time they make a change. A written methodology will ensure that the team uses the same procedure each time it checks the site, reducing the possibility of overlooking potential problems. Such a methodology decreases the chances that your site will become unusable—by following the same procedure each time, the team is less likely to forget to check for the bugs that were present the last time something was changed. As time passes, the team can refine the extent of its testing, depending on how often things go wrong and how effective its testing is in finding problems.

Cutover/live

Once your site has been tested sufficiently and you are confident that it fulfills its objectives, you can release it to the public.

At this point, you can disband the project team and halt all resource operations. You should analyze the project for results, accomplishments, and anything you or your team has learned. The site should be reviewed by the stakeholders and the customers and you should commission a final report.