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Razer's Edge: Business On The Net
Putting
Your Business On The 'Net
Prologue
by: Tom Anderson
Starting
a business on the net can be a daunting task. Some simple project management
can help make your
endeavour a success. Make sure to plan ahead and map out what your goals
and objectives are.
Simple project
management starts with defining "what" you want to get done.
Once you know what you'd like
to do (i.e. a marketing website, commerce site, content or blog site,
etc..), deciding how and when come
next. Remeber, you need to be very aware of the three R's - resources,
requirements and calende"r".
Ok, it's not three "R's", but you get the point. Resources,
Requirements and time are all dependent
on one another in a project plan. If one of the three is cut short, or
overloaded, the other two are affected.
The article
below from Simon Buehring
may help you set your roadmap up for doing business on the net.
An original print of the artical can be found at http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Simon_Buehring
Managing
Your Website Development – Eight Easy Steps to Project Management
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Web-Development]
Managing your website development need not cause you
sleepless nights providing you learn the secrets of successful project
management. Perform the best practices
in project management and give your project the best chance of success.
Define
objectives
Objectives
guide everyone on the project to your final goals. Are your objectives
to sell your product online,
to provide customer support, to promote investor relations? Carefully
decide and clearly document your objectives.
Decide the
critical success factors – the things at the end of the project which
tell you if you’ve been successful.
Make them measurable so you know if you’ve achieved them. For example,
the website development should result
in an increase in online sales of 25% by year end.
Stakeholder
analysis
A
stakeholder is someone with an interest in your project’s success
(or failure). Decide who they are and whether
they support your project. Perform stakeholder analysis by classifying
them (high or low) according to how motivated
they
are in helping (or blocking) your project and how influential (high or
low) they are.
Highly influential
and supportive people are your allies. Gain their support whenever you
can. Aim to reduce the
influence of people who are both highly influential and against your project
as these people could act to damage
your project. During your stakeholder analysis, draw up strategies for
dealing with each group of stakeholders.
Define
deliverables
Deliverables
are tangible things produced during the project. Talk with key stakeholders
to help define deliverables.
Will your website design include web page layouts and sitemap for use
by the programming team? What is the
content for each page? Write all this down. Key
stakeholders must review and agree the deliverables accurately
reflect what they expect to be delivered.
Project
planning
Define
how you will arrive at your objectives. This involves planning how many
people, resources and budget are
required. If delivering this in house, decide what activities are required
to produce each deliverable.
For example,
you might decide a web designer will develop page layouts and navigation
diagrams. You might decide
the marketing team will supply all product details and photographs. You
might decide the finance manager will set
up merchant and payment gateway accounts to enable e-commerce transactions
via your website. If outsourcing
work, specify exactly what the sub-contractor should deliver. Estimate
the time and effort required for each activity
and decide realistic schedules and budget. Ensure key stakeholders review
and agree the plan and budget.
Communication
planning
Hold a kick off meeting with the team and explain the plan. Ensure
everyone knows exactly what the schedule is,
and what is expected of them. For example, the web designer needs to know
that he is to produce page layouts
and navigation diagrams based upon the marketing manager’s requirements.
He needs to know his expected start
and end times. Share
your project communication plan with the team. This should include details
of report templates,
frequency of reporting and meetings, and details of how conflicts between
teams and their members will be resolved.
Project
tracking
Constant
monitoring of variations between actual and planned cost, schedule and
scope is required. Report variations
to key stakeholders and take corrective actions if variations occur. To
get a project back on track you will need to
juggle cost, scope and schedule. Suppose
your programmer hits technical problems which threaten to delay the
project. You might recover time by re-organising or shortening remaining
tasks. If that’s not possible, you might
consider increasing the budget to employ an additional programmer, or
consider reducing the scope in other areas.
Be aware
that any adjustments you make to the plan might affect the quality of
deliverables. If you need to
increase the budget, seek approval from the project sponsor.
Change
management
Once
started, all projects change. Decide a simple change strategy with key
stakeholders. This could be a committee
which decides to accept or reject changes which comprises of you and one
or more key stakeholders.
Assess the
impact of each change on scope, cost and schedule. Decide to accept or
reject the change. Be aware
that the more changes you accept the less chance you have of completing
the project on time and within budget
unless you reduce scope in other areas. Suppose
the marketing manager wants to add a popup window to display
full size photographs of products. Assess the impact of this change. You
might need to remove some remaining tasks
to include this change and stay within budget. Or, it might be impossible
to include the change without increasing
the budget or schedule.
Don’t
blindly accept changes without assessing the impact or your project will
overrun.
Risk management
Risks
are events which can adversely affect the success of the project. Identify
risks to a project early. Decide if
each risk is likely or unlikely to occur. Decide if its impact on the
project is high or low. Risks
that are likely to occur
and have high impact are the severest risks. High impact but unlikely
risks, or low impact but likely risks pose a
medium threat. Unlikely and low impact risks pose the least threat.
Create a
mitigation plan of the actions necessary to reduce the impact if the risk
occurs. Start with the severest
risks first, then deal with the medium risks. Regularly review risks.
Add new ones if they occur. Suppose
the
marketing manager cannot decide what he wants from the website. Without
knowing what the marketing manager
wants, the team cannot deliver a website to meet his expectations. You
assess this risk as highly likely to occur
and having high impact. Your mitigation plan might be that the web designer
develops page layouts to be reviewed
by the manager early in the project.
Summary
Performing
best practices in project management will give your website development
project the best chance of success.
Simon Buehring
is a project manager, consultant and trainer. He works for KnowledgeTrain
which offers Project
Management training courses in the UK and overseas. Simon has extensive
experience within the IT industry both in the UK and in Asia. He can be
contacted via the KnowledgeTrain
project management training website.
Article
Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Simon_Buehring
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