Website Project Management - Part 1

Many people get away without managing their website build as a project. For those of you with very simple requirements or who work from home in their underpants button-pushing their 100th scraper site of the day, this might not be too relevant. If, on the other hand, you are embarking on something complex, with more than a couple of team members or especially if the website is for a client, then project management is an absolute must.

Do you manage your projects or do your projects manage you?

I am by no means a project management expert by any means. Even so I have successfully managed some pretty hairy projects and survived, this is what counts after all :O) Hopefully in this post ot two I will be able to impart some Project Management tips which might prevent for you some hair loss and premature wrinkles. This stuff is not just for website builds (although my examples might be!), it can help with anything from planning a roadtrip to building a house or planning a wedding :O)

So what's it all about?

As I said earlier, you might get away most times with a simple to-do list or a "hack it until happy" mentality, and this is fine. There are many ways to run projects, from extremely informal post-it notes and whiteboard, to the most formal and strict PRINCEII, but all successful projects have key concepts and stages in common.

At a most basic level, project management is making sure everyone involved in a project knows what they need to, have all resources necessary and do the work in the most effective way.

Most projects are delivered eventually if all involved survive with their jobs but a successful project is delivered on time, within budget and to the required scope and quality. The best projects hopefully keep all team members on friendly terms!

Even some projects which seem successful on the surface are in fact hiding flaws, such as hidden costs (eg. unpaid overtime), scope creep and gold plating ("why are we still working on this when it was 'launched' weeks ago?"), poor quality control (found another bug!) …

Luckily it is possible to have a smooth project without the burden of lots of extra stress, paperwork, meetings and bureaucracy.

What is a project?

While pretty much any job could be run as a project, the dictionary definition of a project is "planned undertaking". Not much help really but the key word here is "planned". It basically means before starting to do a little planning. And let me tell you a little planning goes a long way! Much of the stress in projects is "unforeseen circumstances" where the circumstances really ought to have been foreseen. Like getting to launch stage and finding out the print ads have gone out with the wrong URL, or worse you do not own the domain. So if all you do is think ahead and write a list of things you need and things you need to do then that is a good start.

Goals

Any project requires a clearly thought-through and articulated goal. Make sure this is properly defined, communicated and understood so everyone has a clear idea of what they are working towards.

• What are you trying to achieve?
• Why are you doing it?
• When is it needed by?
• How will you know that it is finished/achieved?

At its most basic, you simply need to know how you will judge whether the project is complete and successful. If you do not do this right you can get into all sorts of a mess with team members, especially ones working remotely, and you may even end up in court. It also keeps you focussed on what is important so you do not get into a mess of bolt-on features and messed-up priorities.

Constraints and Performance Criteria

Projects are constrained by the following elements:

• Scope/Goals/Performance Criteria
• Cost/Budget
• Schedule/Time
• Quality/Featutes/Specifications

You will see this described in many ways but it always comes down to something similar to Features/Quality vs Time vs Cost. Each of these constraints play against each other and balance out. Everyone involved might have a different idea of which is most important and it is the project manager who has to mediate!

The interactions of these constraints need to be carefully managed and the consequences of changing any of the balances need to be communicated and understood by the project team and client if you have one.

For example, if the deadline is brought forward, making the schedule tighter, you may not be able to deliver without increasing the budget (by adding people or paying expedite fees) or reducing quality or dropping features.

Summary of part 1

You might think this post is very elimentary, and it is, but it is funny how often common sense is not common practice! Many project disasters could be prevented by having clear goals and thinking ahead. Even the best of us sometimes rush into just banging something out thinking it will save time only to find a little forethought could have saved a lot of heartache and embarassment.

Next time I will talk about chunking, breaking down tasks and what you really need to know before starting work.