Where Code and Content Meet: Design Patterns for Web Content Management and Delivery, Personalisation and User Participation

Planning a Project

In the previous chapters we studied a collection of design patterns for custom software development of an advanced website. Now I'd like to change the perspective and look at web development from a project management point of view.

This chapter describes the tasks and activities that must appear on a typical web project's agenda, where 'web project' refers to the kind of project that seeks to establish an advanced website or web platform, and the necessary custom software development in particular. I won't be too specific, as details vary from project to project. Web projects can take on quite different forms and it is pointless to come up with a prefabricated project plan and assume that every project could use it. It's the old rule again: one size does not fit all.

Nonetheless, I'd like to present, in the form of a checklist, those topics that have to be addressed in a typical web project. The list should give you a fairly realistic impression of what a project plan might look like. Feel free to tailor this list to the needs of your specific project and make additions and modifications as you see fit.

Figure 43 gives an overview, while the subsections that follow list the tasks for the individual work packages. For convenience, I'll add references (following an arrow symbol) to relevant patterns from this book, and to other books in a few cases.

This chapter does not a assume a specific software development method, though to some degree I'll favour an agile approach. ...