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Your Website Replacement Project

An Iceberg Analogy

Amanda Holtstrom

• About Amanda

• How can a CMS replacement project be like an iceberg?

• Some lessons from previously navigated icebergs

• Managing scope expansion

About Amanda

Amanda’s an avid hiker who’s had awesome experiences visiting glaciers (the mothers of all icebergs) in Africa and Iceland.

And, since 2011, she’s been scoped, specified and delivered several large

(>$1 million) legacy website replacement projects.

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Iceberg vs. Web Replacement Project

Quick Comparison

Icebergs

• Lots under the water line

• Sea creatures flock to icebergs

• Almost impossible to track as they move around the ocean

• Live 3-6 years

• Can be very destructive once you see what’s below the water line

Replacement Project

• Lots under the covers

• Stakeholders flock to website replacement projects

• Scope is constantly being discovered and debated

• Web content management systems generally need to be replaced every 3-6 years

• Ditto.

Are you…

• Responsible for a website that runs on a platform that is home-grown? Or on a platform that isn’t supported anymore?

• Planning to move your existing site to a new CMS?

• Excited about implementing a new user experience?

• Beginning to realize the website has a lot of in-house stakeholders?

Did you say “yes” to the previous questions?

Ok, you should keep reading…

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Lessons from previous icebergs

3 website replacement scope themes• Time and again, we hear the same three themes

as we’re working with clients to scope their sites.1. Content

2. Data

3. Functionality

• We often hear them say things like…

“There’s probably not more than a few hundred pages…”

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“We’ve only got one or two databases”

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“The new site should do exactly what the current one does”

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Scoping the scope

Getting a handle on the scope

These three steps will help you understand what’s under that ominous waterline:

1. Gather a complete content inventory

2. Count your databases and examine their schemas

3. Survey your stakeholders

1. Content Inventory

• What to do

- Create a list of all our pages, their URLs, the page templates they use and who owns them

• What you’ll find

- Whole sections of the website that have not been updated for years, and who have no owners

- A review of the content inventory will result in a list of content that needs to be updated or deleted prior to launch

- Mapping the existing page templates to the target templates to find out if all potential situations are covered

2. Data Schemas

• What to do

- Count the data sources your website connects to

- Model the data structures that each of these data sources use

- Make any modifications to these definitions prior to project start

• What you’ll find

- Situations where data structures are being misused

- The number of data sources is likely more than you would have thought

3. Stakeholder Management

• What to do:

- Consult the key stakeholders

- Collect a list of existing and desired functionality

- Involve them in the review of the priority of these scope items

- Include them in the project throughout the build

• What you’ll find:

- When engaging a large number of participants, you’re going to hear something you don’t like and you’re probably going to have to compromise

- But, it’s our experience that it’s better to have those things said out loud in a scope discussion at the beginning of the project than later on to your CEO

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Scope expansion

When the iceberg turns over…

• There are many pressures that you’ll experience when working towards a concrete scope definition

• Being aware of these forces will help you manage them before they get any momentum

Forces expanding the scope

“What’s in scope”

The CompetitionYour competition has improved their site while yours has lagged behind. You want to include new features so that you can stay competitive.

The BusinessWhen your products division hears of the website rebuild project, they’re going to try to slip in features that matter to them, their business and their customers.

The Existing PlatformYour current website does a lot of things. And it probably does some things that aren’t used and shouldn’t be reimplemented.

New TechnologiesTechnology has come a long way in the past few years and you want to leverage some of the evolution.

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Thank you

Thanks for your time

Photo of Amanda watching icebergs flip over at the Jökulsárlón iceberg lagoon in Iceland where the photos in this presentation were taken.