Digital/Web project management process

Whenever you are about to start new digital project you might wonder what exactly the process should look like, or what team members you need to engage? In this article I will describe the universal process and the most common team members involved.

I. Digital/Web project management process

1. Idea/requirements and rough estimation

Before the start of the project, there is the idea. It might be a customer’s idea or the product owner’s idea. The idea is then transformed into requirements and estimation in time, money and other resources is provided based on the requirements.

2. Signed contract or signed project brief/initiation document

If the customer or the product owner (stakeholders) agrees with the estimation you are going to have a contract or project initiation document signed.

3. Inception meeting

Inception meeting (with all project team members) purpose is not only to introduce the team members to each other. The project manager should organize the inception meeting with prepared project plan to discuss and approve by the other team members. Everybody in the team should know “what” and “when” is about to happen (different stages) and also “who” is responsible for every specific task.

4. Detailed requirements and specifications

The project manager and the product owner/customer should sit together and go through the requirements and get into details to clarify any queries. Clarified and detailed requirements are important so the transformation to well written specifications could happen.

5. Mock-up and design

The mock-up is just the outline of the visual structure of any design or feature. If you are going to manage a huge web project – mock-ups are mandatory to save a lot of time and resources. Once there is an agreement over the mock-ups the designers could finish the actual design (colors, buttons, backgrounds, fonts, fancy items, etc...)

6. Front-end coding

Once the design is done it needs to be turned into html/css code. This is what the front-end coders do. Also they add different features driven by javascript or other codes.

7. Beta development / back-end coding

The beta development could start even before the design. The back-end system is the backbone of your digital/web project. Every piece of data you see on the frontend is coming from database/code and the back-end developers ensure that the back-end system works without any flaws. Any critical and major defects/bugs should be fixed during beta revisions/development.

8. Final revisions and polishing

This is the stage where you need to involve the product owner a lot to ensure they/he/she is satisfied with the results. Any smaller issues should be addressed before the digital/web project is about to go live.

9. Going live and demo meeting

When you manage large digital/web projects it is important to allocate enough time and resources for the “going live” stage. Sometimes you need to ensure the hardware is going to stably sustain the traffic and the load and work closely with the system administrators too. It is always good to have a demo meeting in the end of every project, where the project manager, the product owner and/or the team members present the project’s features.

10. Maintenance and Support

These should be ongoing. Any future developments are better to be managed as separate projects and not just under support and maintenance.

II. The digital/web project team members

Below are the possible team members you are going to involve into a digital/web project.

1. Sales person

... or the sales team. They are responsible to gather the initial requirements (from the customer), to ask for rough estimation (from the design/development team) and have the contract between the customer and the company signed off. If the project is internal – the project manager is responsible for these steps (initial requirements, rough estimation, project initiation document signed).

2. Customer / Stakeholders / Management team / Product owner

This is the person (or the party) responsible to authorize the project, provide the requirements, and sign off and accept the delivered project. Also this is the person (the party) to address when the idea/requirement needs clarification.

3. Project manager

The project manager liaises with the rest of the team members and is responsible for the ultimate project delivery. Also the project manager is responsible for the entire project’s documentation – project plan, check list, gantt chart, specifications, project history, etc...

4. Design team

The team (or the person) responsible for the mock-up and the design of the project.

5. Front-end development team

The team responsible for html/css/javascripts, etc...

6. Development team

The team responsible for the back-end development, the software architecture and the backbone of the software project.

7. System administrators

The system administrators provide the hardware and the software support, to run the entire project. They also ensure that the system will have enough capacity to sustain the load.

8. Q/A team

Quality assurance is an important aspect through the entire project delivery process. The Q/A person matches the software with the specifications and ensures there are no defects and differences. If there is no dedicated Q/A team member, the project manager is responsible for stable Q/A.

Project managing classifieds section for Automedia.bg

I have managed this project for three months – from January 2012 until the end of March 2012. Automedia.bg is the largest Auto Media web site in Bulgaria. The web portal consists of articles, categories, galleries, forum and different kind of videos, polls, test drives, and other features. What we missed by the end of 2011 was a section with classifieds where people could browse, look and buy different auto, motor and truck vehicles. In the Automedia strategy – we all (I, OPS dir, CEO and the other directors) approved to initiate, develop and complete this project by the end of the first quarter of 2012. And we were successful - the section is up and running and you could visit it here.

Project scope

The project scope was to: develop classifieds section integrated into Automedia.
The following features had to be implemented:
- Classifieds listings
- Classifieds search – basic and advanced search
- Classifieds pages
- Gallery with pictures for each ad
- Different ad codes to display adverts
- Additional content boxes to be implemented in Automedia

Initiating project phase and design

I and the OPS director negotiated with a partner from Bulgaria to receive the classifieds from their web portal. Also we were successful to negotiate their development team to build the section. On IBG end – we needed to do the designs and the front-end coding, before sending for development. And as usual we started with mock-up of the pages and followed up with a design. I was managing the whole process and was responsible to manage our designers/developers and to communicate with our partners. The design was done but we did not have any available front-end developers so I and the OPS director decided to outsource the front end coding. It was done really well and then I moved the project to our partners do develop it on their own server. I sent them a package containing – the design, the front-end code and specifications to start working.

Development of the section

We have arranged just one meeting to clarify the project features at this point and just after 4 weeks the beta site was done. It was up to me to provide revisions and it took another week to fix some issues before we were ready for a launch. As planned, we needed our system administrators to connect the sub-domain name with the section on the sever of our partners. It took a day to configure this but we managed to meet the deadline and we launched the classifieds section by 27th of March 2012. It was a great success and drove 25% more traffic to Automedia. The visitors found the section very useful and were grateful for it.

Project managing a web portal for Euro 2012

There are just two days to the final Euro 2012 match between Italy and Spain, after the beautiful victory Italy claimed against Germany yesterday. As a person who took part in the Euro 2012 online presence for the Bulgarian market, I am going to describe a very nice project I managed and completed about two months ago. It was a micro website for Euro 2012, developed for the largest Bulgarian football portal – gol.bg (part of IBG group). The website is still there – so feel free to visit it at: www.gol.bg/euro2012/

Project scope

The project scope was to create an Euro 2012 micro website in Gol.bg
The micro website should have had the following sections:
- Main page with recent news, articles, games forecasts, analysis, ads, etc…
- Special sections with forecast, analysis and lifestyle news
- Section about the groups and the teams
- Section about all Euro championships - the history
- Section about the cities and the stadiums
- Section containing calendar of the matches
- Gallery section

My team consisted of internal UX gurus and designers, internal media team and external web development company. I was responsible to project manage the execution and the delivery of the project. We started doing the mock-up and the design of the pages. I provided design specifications – regarding the sections we needed and the the type of content the designers needed to put in every section. Our internal designers did a great job of selecting the most relevant color scheme and to provide great maps, pictures and photos of the stadiums, national teams, national flags, various logos, etc… After that - the design was approved by the Ops director and the company management.

It was time for me to move the project, along with the development specifications to the external web development team. They needed to do the front end coding and the development of the micro web site. They did a great job of doing the frontend coding in less than a week and to deliver the first beta site in about two weeks. I am not going to bore you with my checklist and project plan, but just want to mention that everything went really smoothly and according to my plan. After the beta site was completed I and Gol.bg media team inspected it and returned several revisions. After they were implemented it took some time before the media team was able to fill all the needed content. When this was done – I presented the project to our managers to get the final approval. And in the second week of May 2012 – our Euro 2012 micro website went live. More than 50 000 unique users are visiting it every day and the feedback we receive is really great.

Mobile version of Dnes.bg

I am very proud that I and my team were able to complete this huge project just 2 weeks before I left Investor.bg Group (IBG). It was a real challenge to project manage the idea, the design and the development of entire new mobile web site for the largest news portal in Bulgaria – Dnes.bg
Today, the mobile website is up and running, so please feel free to visit it at: m.dnes.bg

Project scope

- To develop a modern mobile web portal for Dnes.bg
- User friendly and easy to navigate home page
- Article page with various placeholders
- Comments functionality
- Listing pages
- Gallery page with thumbnails
- Horoscopes section
- Currency rates section
- TV and Cinema programmes sections

The main goal of the project was to design, develop and deliver a great mobile web site for the largest news portal in Bulgaria – Dnes.bg

Project team

Lubo – Chairman of the board of directors of IBG
Iana – OPS director (at IBG)
Alex – External UX/Design consultant - https://posteffects.bg/
Emarketing – External Web marketing agency - https://emarketing.bg/
Hristo – External Web developer
Dnes.bg Media team (at IBG)
Simeon – Project manager (at IBG)

The team consisted of IBG members, External UX/Design consultant, External Web developer, External Web design agency. I, Iana and Alex were responsible to elaborate the idea, I was responsible to write project specifications, project roadmap and to communicate with Emarketing and Hristo so they could deliver the final product. Emarketing were responsible to do the mock-up, the design and the front-end coding, and Hristo was responsible to do the development of the web site. Lubo acted as the manager who provided final approvals at the stages and Dnes.bg Media team supported the project once it was published live.

Project resources

Lubo, Iana, Dnes.bg media team and Simeon – employees of IBG
Alex – External consultant – hourly based cost
Emarketing – External/Web marketing agency – design & frontend. Fixed contract
Hristo – external web developer - hourly based cost

Costs:  ~100 000 EUR
Time: ~ 82 working days (4 months)

The costs calculations were done based on the fixed contract with Emarketing, the hourly based payment rate of Alex and Hristo and also the time that the IBG team members spent on the project. The exact number is confidential information, so 100k is just an example number.

The project checklist

Here is the checklist I used to manage the project. I also used project specifications document and my project/task list to write down notes about the project. Also a flowchart containing all the pages and functionalities (and the logic behind them) was created by me. The tasks were broken down using simple waterfall technique. The project roadmap was:
1. I, Iana and Alex discussed the project, the pages and the mock-ups with Emarketing.
2. Emarketing delivered mock-ups for the major pages.
3. We discussed the mock-ups at IBG and provided revisions.
4. Emarketing implemented the revisions and then authorization was granted to proceed with the designs of the pages.
5. Again, the designed pages were revised and approved after that.
6. The frontend coding was done by Emarketing.
7. The project and the project specifications were sent to Hristo for development.
8. The beta site was revised.
9. The site went live – and we (IBG team + Hristo) continued to monitor and maintain it.

After the new mobile site was launched live – we received tremendous amount of positive feedback. Our managers were happy but most importantly the users using the mobile web site were very happy about it. And all the team members were very proud that we managed to deliver such an outstanding product.

PRINCE2 project management basics

PRINCE2 project management methodology is a Registered Trade Mark (Crown Copyrighted) of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries. Due to this fact I am only going to share some basics of PRINCE2. The following article is not to be considered as a substitute of the official PRINCE2 documents but just to serve as a basic source of information and also to provoke your further interest in PRINCE2. It is highly recommended to purchase additional materials and courses and also to visit the official PRINCE2 site for more information.

PRINCE2 introduction

The Projects in a Controlled Environment is effective and widely used Project Management methodology. It is a structured method and could be incorporated in the management of very huge and expensive projects in different fields. PRINCE2 is also pretty much traditional kind of approach – very structural and the idea is to ensure that the project is broken down into stages and each stage is delivered in terms of scope, cost and due time.

PRINCE2 principles

There are seven basic PRINCE2 principles:
- Business justification at all stages of the project
This is to ensure that the final product delivered by the project should remain valuable at all project stages. The product idea should constantly be checked regarding the environment and if any changes and updates need to be introduced – they should be. It is imperative that the product/change is still important and valuable for the company while the project runs – otherwise the project should be canceled.

- Adjust and learn from experience
It is important for the PRINCE2 team to learn from the experience of the past projects. And it is even more important to adjust the current project management style based on the experience with the current team and project scope.

- Clearly defined roles and responsibilities
It is pretty much self-explanatory. All the roles and responsibilities should be defined in a clear manner.

- Manage by stages
As a traditional project management methodology – PRINCE2 – encourages the project manager and the project board to break the project into stages and implement them one after another (using waterfall method).

- Define management boundaries
For example the project manager could be allowed to do some changes in the scope of the project if they are not going to cost more than certain amount or take more time to be developed than certain time frame.

- Focus on product
The focus should always stay on the product that is supposed to be delivered/achieved by the execution of the project.

- Tune up to the specific project needs
As PRINCE2 methodology could be used to manage small and huge projects – the method could be tuned to fit the current project needs.  Some projects could just incorporate some parts of PRINCE2, for example the project management team structure.

PRINCE2 themes

- The Business Case
The business case is usually the initial idea of product/change that needs to be introduced for the organization. It pretty much answers the question “why should we do this?”

- Organization
The project is always a temporary organization. The sponsoring organization needs to ensure that the proper team members are assigned and available to participate in the project. It should answer the question – “who is involved in the project?”

- Project scope and quality boundaries
The project scope should outline what needs to be delivered in details.

- Planning
The planning is very important part of PRINCE2 project management. All the plans should include the costs, the teams involved and the due dates for all the stages.

- Risk management
Just like in any SWAT analysis - it is important to identify the potential risks/threats for the project and to assess the impact if a particular risk situation happens. There should also be a backup plan “what to do if there is a significant threat to the project”.

- Change management
Although PRINCE2 is a traditional project management method – it allows introduction of “change” in all project stages. The project scope, specifications, team and developments - could all be a subject of change.

- Keep track of the project progress
Following a PRINCE2 project roadmap, the project manager should always be aware of “where is the project now”, “what should be done next” and “what was already done”.

PRINCE2 team

There are four major parties involved in PRINCE2 project management.
- Corporate and Programme management
These are usually the stakeholders or the board of directors of the company. They are responsible for authorizing and funding the project. They also need to delegate the proper management rights to the Project Board.

- Project Board (directing project management)
The company directors – like the CEO, OPS director, Business development director, other directors, senior users of the product, etc... They are responsible for the major project directing and need to authorize the project initiation, the different project stages and to quality check the completed stages in terms of the project scope.

- Project Manager (project management)
The project manager is responsible for the daily project management. The project manager is the liaison between all the involved parties and reports directly to the Project Board.

- Team Manager and The Team (delivering management)
There could be several team managers. Development team manager, design team manager, Q/A team manager, etc... The project manager should delegate the proper development and implementation of particular tasks to the team managers/leaders. The team managers are responsible for the development of the product in terms of costs, due dates and quality assurance.

Project management - Project list

The project/task list is one of the most useful tools a decent project manager is going to need. 
Imagine you are a project manager for external/internal projects and you have more than 20 projects to manage. If you do not have a decent list of projects you soon will be lost and confused. You are going to forget most of the communication done for every single project and put the projects in risk of failure.

So you definitely need a place to store all of your projects information, due dates, progress, task-numbers, etc. And this is why you need this magic tool… the project list.

What information should you put into the project list?

Well, before you get too excited keep in mind that on top of everything else - the project list should be useful and very easy to browse. Imagine a customer is calling you to discuss something about his project. You really need to be able to quickly get to the proper location and information for this particular project. And you definitely do not want to overdo your project list and make it hard to browse.

To start – you need the project’s name for sure. If it is a web project you also need the web site this project is associated with. It is important to have a place to write notes too. And if you are using tasks management software like Jira you need a place to keep record of all Jira task numbers referring to this project. It is also good to have a row with the current phase of the project, and also the date of the latest action – when something was done for the project.

Example of a good project list

Here is an example of the project list I use (click on the picture to enlarge it).

And these are the fields I use:
- Project name – make it clear enough.
- Web site – web site associated with the project. This could really be software name or something else, depending on the type of the project.
- Phase – the current stage of the project.
- Date of last action – should give you a hint when was the last time something happened on that particular project.
- Due date – put your final due date for the completion of the project there.
- Notes/Comments - the most important field!!! Always put a short memo when something happens to the project. Use the format – date/hour and what happened. This way you could always keep track over the project’s actions and parties involved. You could also very easily create reports using the “notes” field.
- Jira N – contains the task number in Jira. It could be used with other task management software as well.

Introduction

Hi guys, I am Simeon and I am a guru in the fields of Project Management, SEO, Marketing ... and sports, mainly bodybuilding :). I will be using my Professional-tech blog to share my knowledge with you on all those cool topics.

I am currently based in the London area and I have experience on "how to relocate to London" - so expect some articles about that as well.

Cheers!