Web Project Fundamentals

Hosted by Seth and John

Introduction

Go around looking for peoples idea and go -- seems to be split between folks who are here because they are about to rebuild their organizations site and are looking for ideas and best practices and folks who are project managers or consultants looking for good pointers and ideas.

There was mention of CRM's (Constituent relationship management) and CMS (Content Management Systems). Our groups includes project managers, accidental techies at non-profits, designer and developers.

Define your goals

Seth speaks about his experience seeing project scope creep get out of hand and have to scale back a little. Recommends doing development in stages, start with CMS version of existing site, add features after that.

Involve stake holders

Seth encourages folks to involve them often and early

Invest in hiring process

Write a longer RFP (Request for Proposal) but with a one page summary. Investigate the applicants, look at their experience.

John speaks about this experience with groups wanting to upgrade their websites and tools, how he really asks them to develop goals and plans. Create a complete buy-in and strategic plans that reflect each part of the site.

John 4 C's

• Credibility

• Cultivation

• Clickability

• Content

Micheal suggests content inventory as good starting point in response to John's mention of wireframe as part of the strategic plans. Matthew stresses the stake holder involvement, making sure you talk to the people using your site. Tim talks about the use of persona's as a tool for strategic planning.

Amanda asks, where do you include a persona in the process when the process looks like planning and creating a design brief, content map and then a wireframe?

Kelley suggest that the persona's and audience should be dealt with really early.

Tim asks what questions people ask about audience? Sabiha talks about how they use real world examples, point to questions about what other organizations they feel reflect them.

Kelley talks about the costs and implementation of doing database mapping and CRM and CMS integration.

AH-HA's :

• Seeing your software from the perspective of managers
• The idea of a content inventory

Brianna asks for ideas about keeping large groups of stake holders from derailing the process? Folks suggest clear stages and goals and the use of telephone over email.

Spencer, asks how can you use a complex system to simplify your site? Folks answer that using dynamic tools, generating features and reflecting your content. Dynamic tools reflect your site structure and content, so having good structure and content to be reflected.

Micheal, talk about stakeholders as a political question and battle and that the goal is to keep the group small and identify who has the final say.