Project Planning

Web Projects that Succeed

admin — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 11:55:02 -0700

When you plan for features instead of planning for change, you are planning to fail.

No one has ever come to us with a project they started with some other developer that failed in the Planning Stage. During planning, everyone is excited, and developers can say "yes" to every request, because no real work is being done. It's all just ideas floating in the collective imagination of everyone involved.

Unfortunately, there's no such thing as a "collective imagination." Inevitably, everyone imagines something slightly different from anyone else. Decisions made in a Planning Stage are always based on limited information and unrevealed assumptions.

This is what causes project to fail in the Execution Stage. Once work begins, the dreamers disengage, and naively expect that all their hopes will magically come true without any intervention on their part. Only when the developers come back with a disappointing delivery many weeks or months later does the client realize that the people involved were never speaking the same language. read more »

Tips for planning your Web Project

admin — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 12:30:02 -0800

We hear from a lot of people who know that they need to get their communications, processes, and data online, but they don't know where to go from there. Here's some advice on how to plan for your project, and how to find a Web Developer who can meet your needs. read more »

Building a Better Blog

admin — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:55:45 -0700

For anyone with a 'simple' 'blog project seems like there are two questions that always need to be answered:

1.) Which software to use?

2.) How to do this as inexpensively as possible?

As to question #1 (software), I fully admit a bias toward Drupal, but I will try to give a somewhat objective overview of your choices. read more »

On Hiring Drupal Developers

admin — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 07:32:08 -0800

Every technology that becomes widely popular as quickly as Drupal has will certainly attract individuals looking for a quick buck, without concern for real skills and experience.

Drupal's incredible flexibility means that most problems can be solved in more than one way; but some of those ways are not "The Drupal Way" and can result in more time and expense down the road, when you want to change or expand your site. We are frequently contacted by organizations who had hired a previous developer who couldn't deliver what was needed, or who delivered a mess of code that had to be untangled before new work could begin. read more »