Best practices for successful digital projects Mikal Ann Mast, COMPAS Finbar Mulholland, REDBOT Tuesday 28 March 2017
Best practices for
successful digital
projects
Mikal Ann Mast, COMPAS
Finbar Mulholland, REDBOT
Tuesday 28 March 2017
Planning - Where it all begins
• Failing to plan is one of the most common reasons
why digital projects fail to achieve their objectives.
• Common results of failing to plan include:
• Increased scope
• Missed deadlines
• Over budget
• Under achieving end product
• Increased stress levels all round!
If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail
Making your project a success
• How can we ensure project success?
Some useful tips and suggestions...
Roles & responsibilities
• Define key roles and responsibilities for your team &
external suppliers
• Ensure everyone knows what they are expected to
contribute (and when)
• Common project roles:
• Decision maker(s)
• Project manager
• Copywriter or editor
• Developer
• Designer
Define success criteria
• In order to evaluate the success of any project, we
need to define metrics which we can measure
against once the project has been completed.
• What are you trying to achieve? If you can’t
communicate and share this vision it will be
difficult for others to get onboard.
Website Information Architecture (IA)
• In order to evaluate the success of any project, we need to
define metrics which we can measure against once the
project has been completed.
• What are you trying to achieve? If you can’t communicate
and share this vision it will be difficult for others to get
onboard.
Content planning
• Content is KING!
• In our experience the most common reason for missed
deadlines is poor content planning.
• Do not just copy and paste content from word
documents. It won’t work in the responsive world.
• Think about how people will engage with your content
(text, audio, imagery, video etc).
• It always take longer to prepare than you think!
Website functionality
• Define key website functionality.
• What do you want to happen when someone clicks a
button?
• How should content be ordered? Can a user filter content?
• Will video be streamed from a third-party (Vimeo/YouTube)
• Should that be an image carousel?
• Not defining this will be costly.
• Avoid… “but I thought it would work like this”
Specification - Pull it all together
• Pull all your research and preparation together into a
brief/specification.
• Example contents
• Project introduction and background
• Website aims, objectives and success criteria
• Audience and target market
• Website structure
• Content plan
• Key functionality
• Roles & responsibilities
• Timeline & budget
The design & development process
• Key stages:
• Discovery - getting to know you and your project
• Project plan - plan of action
• Wireframing - user journey and layout
• Visual concept - creating look and feel
• Development - html and cms
• Testing and deployment - test and make live
• Monitoring and evaluation - making constant improvements
Selecting a content management system
• CMS depends on complexity of the project.
• Our preferred choice of cms is:
• Wordpress (CMS) or
• Perch (Commercial)
• Bespoke
Lessons learnt
• Involve the services of an external agency as soon as
possible
• Be realistic with timelines
• Don’t hide the budget
• Don’t forget about the content!
• A digital project is never finished - plan for the future
Tools that can help
• Project management - teamworkpm, BasecampKeep conversations, files, tasks all in one place.
• Sitemaps & IA - Slickplan, Mind ManagerDesign and present your IA
• Documentation and collaboration - Google AppsCreate, share and collaborate for free
QUESTIONS?