Aug 06
In the same way that communications plans, meetings, and approval chains can sometimes be the enemy of effective web work, there is also the quagmire of demanding every great feature on the first iteration.
Most often the culprit is yourself. You want the best. You want it all. You want to buy a house and keep pushing back the move-in date, until every last piece of furniture is neatly in place.
Hardly anybody has time/resources for that.
August 6th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
well put. We often say get a project into production at 90-95% and we can fix the last 5-10%
August 6th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Nicely said. We want it all and we want it now. Knowing that we can’t make that happen I’ve been telling clients for years that we can launch a Web site in phases. If we build our site map to plan for A,B,C,D and E, we can go ahead and build A, B and C now, then add D and E later. When academic departments or companies are waiting for more information, whether that’s 50 pages of copy that needs to be written or the final version of the video that’s in production, launching in phases can prevent delays that might otherwise take several weeks or even months.
This is very useful from a marketing standpoint because it let’s you get the word out sooner than later. An example of this would be the Year of Darwin and Evolution site I built when I as at Case Western Reserve. The site was built to promote a year long series of science lectures and events celebrating Charles Darwin. The project team leader for the events first met with me in fall of 2007. We came up with a site plan and launched the site in January 2008 so that we could start promoting the event early and have a place for faculty members could submit information related to the project. The first event wasn’t scheduled until August 2008, but this let us start spreading the word well in advance.
As time went on and events were confirmed we added them to the online schedule. We continued to do that throughout the year as new events were added on a regular basis. Many of the events were also videotaped so once we had a few of those posted on YouTube I was then also able to add a video section to the site. As more recordings were made available, they were then added. This site was one that had to evolve continuously. If we had had to wait until it was complete we couldn’t have launched until the events were over!
So I’m a firm believer in implementing things one step at a time. Thanks for the reminder on this useful and practical strategy!
August 6th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
There was a point that I got to with 1lessjob where I decided good enough was ok. Besides, I was building it from my perspective and it was time to get some feedback on what people wanted from the site and how it should evolve, I am getting the feeling that it will never be ‘done’.
August 12th, 2009 at 4:11 am
Hmpfh. Thanks to thinking like this, our web developers tend to launch websites that have only 20% of the features they were specified to have and promise to fix them later. Except, of course, they rarely do so. Instead, they tend to claim that fixing the missing 80% would delay them from launching another site that is 20% complete somewhere else, so “maintenance” work gets delayed indefinitely.
It’s disheartening to realise that a project that has now been running for 18 months is already 12 months behind schedule in many areas. Insanely, the project manager keeps getting high level management to sign of that the phases are “complete”, so that the missing 80% from the project specs will now never be done.
I am not sure why these people have jobs. Overpromising and underdelivering seems to be the only thing they’re good at.
August 12th, 2009 at 8:53 am
you’re a disgruntled customer because your web development team has issues with overcommitment. …signing checks that can’t be cashed, etc. Or maybe they are just waiting on copy from an equally-incompetent copywriter. In any case, the mantra is “under-promise and over-deliver”, not the other way around. The critical question you must answer, young jedi, is who to blame for the over-commitments.