The Project Life Cycle
Quite commonly many clients ask “How long will it take” and “how much will it cost”. Yet when asked, “What is it that you would like your website to accomplish ?” or “How will a website solve your business problems ?” I am often met with blank stares. So throughout time many processes have been developed to try and answer these questions. Aldersoft is very familiar with these processes and has taken the best of them and many years of experience to develop a methodology to best address the needs of the clients and to translate them into a functional system which improves your business, helps your customers and is manageable and maintainable for years to come. This process can be called the Project Life Cycle. Also in order for it to succeed, it requires that both Aldersoft and your staff or representatives participate together as a team. Aldersoft having the technical expertise and experience and your staff or representatives having the expert knowledge of how your organization operates.
Just so that you are not overwhelmed by the process described here, please realize that every project has its own unique character, and the Project Plan will not include everything listed here. More correctly, smaller projects will have far less complications, so many of the steps or phases below may be merged or eliminated. At the same time, large projects will need to adhere to more of the phases. No two are ever alike. We put together a Project Plan that is appropriate for the effort and cost that is required.
Analysis
What do you want to accomplish ?
- Improve my Business’s or Organization’s recognition and visibility amongst my competition.
- Improve communication between our company and our clients.
- Allow members of our organization to raise funds for projects.
- Allow our customers to review our products and order them online.
- Allow our customers to request a quotation.
- Improve order tracking and stock on hand.
- Allow us to accept online payments.
- There are many other goals to accomplish aside from those examples above.
Personnel Requirements
- Day to Day management of system communication, questions, customer contact.
- Day to Day Management of website content, product catalogues, pricing.
- New staffing requirements for new functions.
- Day to Day Technical Management (Aldersoft provides a Ongoing Maintenance Service)
- Job Descriptions (We have samples).
Are there any legal or legislative issues to deal with.
What benefits do we expect to have a successful outcome.
Detailed Analysis
Once we have a good understanding of the above mentioned goals, we can in greater detail what type of functionality we can use to accomplish them. Below re some examples to consider.
- Accept Online Payments.
- Issue Online Invoices
- Allow customers to place orders online.
- Allow customers to request quotations.
- Allow customers to review their records of purchasing and payment.
- Allow customers to create profiles, Contact Name, Address, City, Province, Country, Postal Code, Phone number, etc.
- Your History, goals, objectives, etc. often known as “About Us”.
- Recognition of Partners and Links to their websites.
- Frequently Asked Questions.
- Gallery of products, jobs, achievements to help your customers and potential customers see what kind of quality and workmanship you perform.
- A Simple Contact Us page for informal customer communications.
- Etc. anything else you would like.
- Who can we contract to provide hosting for the website and possibly email.
Aldersoft highly recommends 100% WebHost. A Winnipeg based company who has been in business for a long time and provides excellent service. - Would you like “Branded” Email ? Where the branding reflects your company or organization. EG. Bill.Johnson@ACME.CA
Construction
- We take the results from above, and start creating it in a development environment, which is unseen by the public.
- We go through a cycle of review, adjust, increase functionality as the system is further built.
- The cycle ends when all parties are satisfied and we get a final approval.
Quality Assurance
- Testing etc depends on you and staff. The more eyes the better. This also increases the feeling of ownership and commitment.
- Everyone involved needs to test the new version of the system. Not only is this to ensure that it functions as expected, but it also acts as a training tool.
- As problems are discovered, we go through another cyclical process of making changes and unexpected decisions and start testing again.
- The cycle continues until everyone is satisfied with the result.
- Technically, Quality Assurance can run in parallel with Construction. This speeds up the processes and reduces costs.
Implementation
- A new “Production” environment is created.
- Any preparations required to “Go Live”, such as data loading, customer information pre-loading etc. are done.
- When everything is in place and you approve, we essentially flip the switch and the new system is running.
- Once the initial bumps and bruises are behind us, we can proceed to the Evaluation phase.
Evaluation Period
- We freeze the system to ascetic changes and only deal with urgent problems that prevent you from doing business.
- There is a tendency for “things to go back to the old way” at the first sign of problems.
- We need to establish the difference between “urgent” and “I don’t like it”.
- Only “urgent” problems should be addressed during this period to avoid the above.
- We need to define how long the evaluation period will last. Generally one or two business cycles.
Project Review
- At the end of the Evaluation Period, we review the problem list and determine:
What is no longer a problem ?
A ranking or Priority for the ones that are left. - We decide how to address these, rank them and start a new project to address them.
- Those that are urgent have hopefully already been addressed.
Project Closing
- Aldersoft gets paid any outstanding amounts.
- You get a 90 day warranty, 3 months of Ongoing Maintenance included.
- and around the loop we go again for more changes, as things always change.