Website Design and Development Projects Need to Be Document…
A website goes live only after it has undergone different phases of revisions and development. It happens more so when the website is meant to serve a professional purpose. Identification of certain objectives is really necessary to understand the business model more easily and to measure a project's actual scope and size. The long term objectives of a website can only be identified after you sit face-to face with the decision makers.
It will also help you to understand a few important factors like –
- Competitors of your client website
- Scope of your target market
- Search engine strategies you need to follow
- Promotional strategies you need to adopt
- Key objectives of the site
- Metrics to set benchmark for measuring your achievements
After attending a meeting with the project managers in person, you'll be able to decide whether youought to include a CMS or not. Remember that a CMS may allow your client a certain degree freedom to upgrade key areas of the project on their own. In doing so, they will not be seeking assistance from your team of developers if the need be. Your developers may be able to relate to such changes only after the lapse of a certain period of time. For instance, the CMS of an ecommerce website may provide their staff with a simple interface that allows them to make small changes relating promotional campaigns, discount offers and latest features of their products or services.
Project Documentation
Every professional website has to fulfill a specific goal or objective. Such objectives and goals of a website are stated in a requirement document regardless of the nature and size of the project. At times, the project requirements are documented by the client prior to attending the initial meeting. It may come to you in the form of a detailed agenda of specifications or else it could just be an outline description of the project delivered in the form of a quotation invitation. More often, the developer will need to extend the discussion on the basis of his interpretation. He needs to share his views after he understands and accepts the content, and addresses other issues. The document also needs to describe the responsibilities of all developers; the deliverables need to be pitted against all major players of the project.
Functional specification
A careful revision and approval of the project requirement document is followed by drafting of a functional specification. This draft contains the details of ways in which all necessary points indicated in the project document may be achieved on a client's website and mechanisms supporting it. All pages of the client site are itemized in this detailed documentation along their purpose and category of users regardless of whether it is visible only to the members of management or to be consumed by the members of public. The functional implementation is a separate document that shows a proper description of developmental mechanisms of a much higher level within ownership of each item. It also assigns benchmarks for deliverables and schedules the various phases of development.
Documentation of these types may not seem necessary for smaller ventures, but they are provided to prove more beneficial for protracted projects through statements referring to schedules, ownership, implementation and various other necessities. These documents may be communicated to gain references for reuniting and identifying individual responsibilities whenever a project goes off track.
