Planning Your Website
Skip | 03 February, 2005 19:43
I'm pretty angry at the moment, and it's due to "other people" who failed to plan. Planning should consume at least 50% of your total effort in just about anything related to software, and that includes building a website......
In the case of a project that I'm involved in, the owners of the company had selected the software system prior to my joining the project.
Upon joining the team, and with my considerable experience with project management and in general, my management experience, I cautioned the owners that we needed to conduct some reasonable planning activities, especially related to defining requirements.
The project never defined requirements in detail, and is now suffering $10,000+ a month in lost revenue as a result. And it's now going into the third month of that lost revenue.
And that revenue is partly my revenue.
The key issue of defining requirements - meaning exactly what your software / website needs to function to achieve the business goals - is a mandatory need. I've managed hundreds, perhaps more than 1,000 newtwork and software / web projects in my technology career, and know this from first hand experience. In fact, that is one of the things that attracted the owners to me.
However, like so many small business people, they failed to listen to my advice.
It's just so odd why companies hire experts, then don't listen to them.
At any rate, this project moved forward with a ton of unfounded enthusiasm and a lot of risk. The problem is the billing. There were no detailed analysis of what exactly needed to happen in the billing portion of the software. And it doesn't work.
Nothing I can do will change whether it will work or not - it's like putting the proverbial round peg in a square hole.
Everyone involved is now facing the very real prospect of throwing away the core software they initially acquired, tossing out over 2,000 labor hours of content creation and website / software development and months of endless frustration from myself, the programmers, the content creators and the owners.
And now, as so many projects end up - it's in rescue, or salvage mode. No amount of money is too much for the owners to spend to get the billing working properly.
What a shame.
The lesson for you is simple and stated previously: plan and do detailed requirements analysis. Then and only then do you begin software, hardware and network and tools systems selection.
Maybe another day I'll share with you how to do these tasks without consuming your world and getting stuck in the concrete of paralysis by analysis (which happens a lot in big companies).
Skip
In the case of a project that I'm involved in, the owners of the company had selected the software system prior to my joining the project.
Upon joining the team, and with my considerable experience with project management and in general, my management experience, I cautioned the owners that we needed to conduct some reasonable planning activities, especially related to defining requirements.
The project never defined requirements in detail, and is now suffering $10,000+ a month in lost revenue as a result. And it's now going into the third month of that lost revenue.
And that revenue is partly my revenue.
The key issue of defining requirements - meaning exactly what your software / website needs to function to achieve the business goals - is a mandatory need. I've managed hundreds, perhaps more than 1,000 newtwork and software / web projects in my technology career, and know this from first hand experience. In fact, that is one of the things that attracted the owners to me.
However, like so many small business people, they failed to listen to my advice.
It's just so odd why companies hire experts, then don't listen to them.
At any rate, this project moved forward with a ton of unfounded enthusiasm and a lot of risk. The problem is the billing. There were no detailed analysis of what exactly needed to happen in the billing portion of the software. And it doesn't work.
Nothing I can do will change whether it will work or not - it's like putting the proverbial round peg in a square hole.
Everyone involved is now facing the very real prospect of throwing away the core software they initially acquired, tossing out over 2,000 labor hours of content creation and website / software development and months of endless frustration from myself, the programmers, the content creators and the owners.
And now, as so many projects end up - it's in rescue, or salvage mode. No amount of money is too much for the owners to spend to get the billing working properly.
What a shame.
The lesson for you is simple and stated previously: plan and do detailed requirements analysis. Then and only then do you begin software, hardware and network and tools systems selection.
Maybe another day I'll share with you how to do these tasks without consuming your world and getting stuck in the concrete of paralysis by analysis (which happens a lot in big companies).
Skip
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