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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?