Keeping Your Web Strategy on Track

Mark Cahill -- Expert Business Source, 2/3/2007 5:54:00 AM

Regardless of whether you have a CIO, a Web manager or you wear the IT hat yourself, there is one immutable rule about technology projects: At some point, they’re bound to veer off track. Specifically for small and medium-sized businesses that are building (or expanding) their presence on the Internet, it’s easy to venture down a path that quickly becomes littered with overly complex technologies, conflicting agendas and unclear objectives.

I should know. During my tenure at Atex, I’ve worked on many major web projects, and each one has carried its own particular set of lessons. Here are five, with some related links. Most of them are based on basic tenets of project management, but the point is that you need to manage your web projects with as much rigor as you do the rest of the business.

1. Understand your business and its challenges. This concept seems simple enough, but it doesn’t always play out as you might expect, particularly as it pertains to your website. In one memorable trip down the rat hole, I was asked to redesign the Atex website using all gray text.Unfortunately, because Atex is in the newspaper software and service industry, I knew that gray text would be associated with “old” thinking – exactly the image we were trying to slay. The issue fell on deaf ears with our marketing lead, but our CEO realized the potential perception problem and killed the design.
   If you can’t boil down the mission of your website to a clear, single-sentence description, you probably don’t really understand what your objective is. Are you building or redesigning your site for brand awareness, or lead generation, or e-commerce? The design needs of each will be different.
   
2. Design, plan and approve before you start. Make sure a plan is in place for keeping all key players up to date on your progress. In our case, because upper management wasn’t kept in the loop properly, we went through eight full designs, each implemented fairly extensively, before I discovered that management didn’t like the direction in which we were heading.
3. Avoid “flavor of the month” technology. There are five words that make me cringe in meetings: “Wouldn’t it be cool if…”The phrase usually leads to a discussion of why a new (and generally untested) technology will make all the difference. If your focus during planning is on technology instead of functionality, you’re in trouble. Often, this means that developers burn up needless hours recreating solutions that may already exist. New technologies also mean developers probably lack the skills to use them effectively, increasing the risk of technical problems down the road.
4. Keep the team lean and mean. Project bloat is probably not a problem for most small businesses, but it’s worth noting regardless. Involving too many people in an IT project often creates a “smartest kid in class” syndrome, where everyone feels compelled to offer up some critical piece of advice to justify their presence.If your project begins to strain under the weight of too many viewpoints, consider forming a core SWAT team and clear the field for them so they can get things back on track.
5. Keep a close eye on the deliverables. Schedule the project, establish milestones, and watch for any slippage. While delays are often unavoidable, they also can be a sign that the train is jumping the tracks. The earlier you intervene, the more likely you are to minimize the damage. You can view (and download) a sample project schedule from MIT here.