Web Design on a Shoestring - WebReference- | 3

Web Design on a Shoestring

Sample Site: Project Goals for the Something Blue Site

Imagine that an artist, Mary Hoy, has asked you to create a site based on her last exhibition, Something Blue. She can pay only a pittance. You like her work and figure that a pittance will help pay the bills, so you take her on as a client. Mary has never been involved in web site creation, so has no way of shaping the scope of the site. You correctly anticipate that her lack of experience might lead her to change her goals and requirements over time. When she sees what her work looks like on the web, she'll be inspired to try new ideas or to add functional requirements to the site. You have anticipated these problems. To protect yourself and the budget, you formalize the project's goals:

Project Goals for the Something Blue Web Site

Something Blue will be an online exhibition of the works of artist Mary Hoy. The site will include 15 of the 40 images in her bricks-and-mortar exhibition (also called Something Blue) that took place at the Good Girl Gallery in Studio City, California, in July 2003. In addition to the 15 images, the site will include 2 interviews with the artist, her resume, and her contact information. The purpose of the site is primarily to promote her work, to give Hoy an online "calling card," and perhaps to lead to a sale or two, although no selling will be done directly on the site.

This is a good example of a budget-sensitive project goal document because it is specific. First, you have established the genre of the site: This is an exhibition, not a retrospective or an e-commerce site. Second, you have quantified the scope of the project. The difference in the cost of producing 15 scans versus 40 scans might add up to quite a bit. You are probably going to be the one doing the scanning and the image editing. This will take time, and creating a schedule around a specific number of images will help you stay on track both for the schedule and the bottom line. The same is true for the interviews and the contact information; you can anticipate the number of web pages that you will have to build. As you put your budget together, you can attach a dollar amount to each major site element.

Budget Threat: Keep the Number of Decision Makers Small - As explained in Chapter 1, "The Secrets to a Successful Shoestring Project," one of the secrets to creating a successful shoestring web site is to keep the number of decision makers small. The more people you involve in the goal-setting phase, the more diffuse your project goals might be. Good resource allocation requires a carefully defined project. If a large group of decision makers is keeping you from nailing down the project goals early in the game, try to pare the number of decision makers to a few key people. If you don't, you will spend big bucks on unfocused work that goes nowhere.

The project goals document cannot save your budget or your sanity if it is not shared with the site's stakeholders. In the Something Blue scenario, the only decision maker is your client, Mary. Most sites, however, involve more stakeholders. You must communicate with all your stakeholders without turning them all into decision makers. The more levels of approval that are required to get the site moving, the more involved and expensive the process will be. More important, the more people are involved in a creative process, the more diffuse the focus can become. Distinguishing between stakeholders and decision makers is not a license to be cavalier; don't blow off the big wigs because, if you ignore them up front, they will be inclined to kill your project just before it launches. Talk about a waste of time and money! Make sure that your group of decision makers is small, but be politic in selecting the composition of that group.

Definition: Client - In this book, I use the term client to refer to anyone who has engaged you for web production. This could be a single client who has hired you to do freelance work, your direct supervisor, or in-house colleagues who depend on you to develop the company's site.

When you have formally established your group of decision makers, be sure to share the project goals document with the whole gang. It does not matter whether they are clients or colleagues. It does matter that you all agree on the goals of the site. If the goals change later, someone will have to pay for the extra time and materials; if you have formal sign-off from clients, colleagues, and bosses, you lessen your chances of getting stuck with the tab.

A formal document that nails down the initial scope places you in a much better position to ask for more resources when, for example, artist Mary Hoy decides that she wants 30, not 15, images of her work. You should never have to pay the price when someone else has a change of mind.


Created: March 27, 2003
Revised: October 17, 2003

URL: http://webreference.com/promotion/design