11 important things that will result in your web application development project success or failure
Since 1999, Magic Web Solutions has worked on many web development projects.
No matter what the size of your company or your industry, however, there is one common aspect: your web development is a project and it is influenced by factors which mean it will succeed or fail.
Experience has taught us to identify those factors. Here we give you an insight into doing the right things and avoiding the pitfalls.
Things that help your web project succeed:
1. You have confidence in your knowledge of what your customers want – you will have done some research or will have received feedback from your customers; whatever you do, ensure that research is representative of your users. Do not make changes on a whim.
2. You have decided on a budget and that money is allocated – a budget tells the developer that you are serious about your web project and that they will be paid for their work.
3. The application is easy to use, intuitive and requires no learning. The business logic must be complex, but functionality should be usable and accessible to be more readily adopted by end users.
4. Somebody has done it before, you can learn from it and improve on it – how often do you hear: ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.‘? It’s true of websites, too; but if you can genuinely improve on a model by making valid and relevant changes, go for it.
5. Your developers understand what you want – you’ve explained your business and how it works; you’ve expressed your ideas clearly and, importantly, you’ve let the developers get on with it and they have produced something for you to review.
Things that will definitely slow your web project down:
6. You constantly make unsubstantiated changes during the development phase and add new funcitonality – consequently, there are more iterations and changes each time and the developer’s list just keeps growing…
7. You are slow to respond – even a day’s delay on a web project has an impact; the cumulative effect can be to shift the deadline by a few weeks. It also gives the impression you are not taking the web project seriously.
8. You impose a deadline before writing a detailed specification – picking a launch date for a website is fine, but without a specification, no-one is going to guarantee your site will be ready.
9. Your specification was missing essential functionality – but it doesn’t matter, does it? The developers can add it in now, can’t they? Well, they can, but it does matter. The web project was planned and resources allocated according to the specification: change the specification and you are affecting the plan and resources. New entities and new relationship between entities will have the most impact.
10. If the web project in final specification requires more time than was planned – estimates are just that: estimates, approximations. If your web project is going to take longer, then it will decrease the productivity.
11. You have an unrealistic budget – unrealistic in terms of you want to achieve. A good developer will tell you what you can expect for your money, but you will get what you pay for.
Contact us to discuss your successful web project.