Effective Website Development Project Plan

Posted on 13 June 2008

Over the years we’ve developed a repeatable, efficient process for developing small to medium sized web sites. These web projects are usually completed in one iteration in about 2 to 3 months.

The process we’ve developed involves considerable interaction with and feedback from the client throughout the project. We’ve broken up the project into 6 or 7 mostly overlapping phases:

  • Inception
  • Requirements
  • Functional Definition
  • User Interface
  • Development
  • Quality Assurance
  • Go Live

It’s important to note that the UI design is determined about half-way through the project. This helps ensure that the design is driven by the business need and functionality instead of the other way around.

Inception Phase
  • •Client Planning Meeting (discuss process and schedule meetings)
  • •Stakeholder Identification
  • Create Website Requirements Survey and Send to Client
  • •Client Completes and Returns the Survey
  • •Survey Analysis
  • •Client Kick-off Meetings (Discuss Business, Branding, Technical)
Business Requirements Phase
  • •Goals (of project/website)
  • •Scope List
  • User List (Primary. Secondary & Tertiary)
  • User Objectives
  • Use Case List
  • Design Needs (Look and Feel)
  • Search Engine Optimization Analysis (Current state, if any, and future needs)
  • Seed Keyword List
  • Competitor List
  • •Company Strengths & Weaknesses
  • Key Messages
  • Technical Requirements
  • •Assumptions

Functional Definition Phase

  • Competitor Analysis (Navigation, Messaging)
  • Site Map
  • Page List
  • Navigation Elements
  • Wire Frames
  • Messaging
  • Creative Brief
  • UI Design Concepts
  • Prioritized Target Keyword List
  • Alignment of Use Cases to the Site Map/Page List
  • Alignment of Keywords to Page List
  • Forms (Fields & Validation)
  • Technical Operating Environment Definition

Development

  • Page Template Creation (From UI Concepts) (HTML/CSS)
  • Template Image Creation (category specific images, etc.)
  • CMS & Database Setup for Development
  • Style Guide
  • Custom Client Specific Coding (Functionality Not Available in CMS)Â
  • Configure Content Management System to create categories, pages, menus, lists, etc.
  • Seed Content
  • Page Content Creation & CMS Integration

Testing & Go Live

  • Integration Testing (plugins, content, etc.)
  • User Acceptance Testing
  • Deploy Solution to Production Environment
  • Turn Site Live
  • Training
  • Support

Every project is unique. So expect to modify your plan with each and every project. Hopefully, this plan will give you a decent baseline to start with.

This post was written by:

John Fairley - who has written 14 posts on Forward Leap.


Contact the author

42 Comments For This Post

  1. EDWARD says:

    Hi, I am a web designer by proffesion.
    I like your article and would like to request you to use your article in my webpage.

    Kind Regards,

    Ed

  2. Rana says:

    I liked your article very much. Thanks for sharing…

  3. Laura Aquino says:

    I like your structure, one thing I would like to suggest is to mention the “Maintenance Phase” which becomes most difficult to some.

  4. Mark Bolden says:

    Great article! Only as a project manager I would say to the last comment I would not include maintenance as a phase, because a project is finite and maintenance is ongoing (a process).

  5. Snigdha Parida says:

    Hi,

    It was helpful in preparing a project development gantt chart for me.. :-)

  6. LadyPM says:

    It is very helpful indeed , Thank You.

  7. Jon Tsourakis says:

    Great article. Thanks for sharing.

  8. Rosary De Filippis says:

    I am impressed with your site. I entered in all the required information to download the project management paper, and it is not responding. Please advice, thanks!

  9. Jeff Zehner says:

    Very succinct structure, thanks. If you care to dive deeper, in more complex systems, I typically break out Content Design (early) from UI Design and allow UI Design to wrap up after functional design is completed, allowing final UI Design to accommodate functional and usability paradigms.

  10. Amir Ali Tayyab says:

    Jeff, Could you pls. elaborate a bit on that cause it is a very interesting point that you raised.

    Thanks,

    Amir

  11. Ezra Dorothy says:

    Bookmarked and Pinged > Website Project Plan – http://www.forwardleap.com/effective-website-development-project-plan

  12. Kristle Molles says:

    I’m learning so much. This is great ;)

  13. Atul Vhale says:

    I tried many times website developing phases but I could not get required information which I expected. since last year even now I always search on this topic. Thanks for this article only one doubt here I think SEO includes in last phase because after completion website there is need to promote website. I am looking forward your next such great article.

  14. nishant says:

    thanks for sharing this :)

  15. Carl says:

    Very good information, thanks for sharing

  16. Geoffrey says:

    ,.im new to web development and this article is very helpful in my project plan.,-)thank you,.

  17. arhasa says:

    Very good article. useful, short and concrete staff. thanks

  18. mary says:

    hi, it’s very good information , thanks

  19. mary says:

    hi, can give me templates of documents for some of phases?

  20. APeters says:

    Thanks alot for the for website guidance

  21. Assencath says:

    i’m currently teaching English to french students training to be developers or designers.
    It’s been very difficult to find any information in English related to their sphere. (specific vocab, articles, etc ..) especially for developers …
    So I find this article very useful.
    And the point is I’m not an expert far from that …
    it would also be interesting for them to be able to communicate in English on their work and exchange with other developers and designers throughout the world.
    Could anyone help me with that issue or give some interesting links …
    Or is interested to exchange with any student, they’re on a sandwich course so have some work experience.
    Any help would be most welcome
    Thank you

  22. Rudraprasad A S says:

    Hi this is awesome

    I would really appreciate your effort in this regard

    It will look great if we separate the development phase into different segments say initial, interim and final because knowingly or unknowingly we use to follow iterative prototype methodology for the development of websites.

    Thank you for your effort

  23. eben says:

    This was really helpful with my project management studies, well laid out, good points, made me think of things things I hadn’t thought of.
    Thank you

  24. clare brace says:

    Hey thank you for the post and also thank you for putting Search Engine Optimization Analysis (Current state, if any, and future needs) early on in the project plan.

    This can be such an important part of the project and left as an after thought can cause lots of problems.

    Clare

  25. pragnesh says:

    thanks you very much this is very good example for web development

  26. Terrie Nelson says:

    Thank you so much for this! I am a student at the Art Institute working on my B.S. in Interactive Media & Web Design and they haven’t covered this at all… at least not yet. So it is very helpful to me as I am already designing small websites to local businesses. Again, thank you!

  27. Avkash says:

    hi. this article is awesome. it will help me to write project planning section in my final semester project documentation.

  28. Derek Versteegen says:

    This is a good outline. However, I feel there is one area left out. Between User Interface and Development there should be a section called Technical Specification. This is more important when a team (especially remote) of developers is involved. Not only does the technical specification detail the languages and databases used to in the solution, but it details what specifically is going to be coded – web pages, methodologies, stored procedures, etc. It details how the function is technically created.

    I’ve always told my clients the functional specification is like telling me you want a car that will take you from Washington D.C. to Chicago, IL using only 25 gallons of fuel. You want to listen to music and bring four friends along for the ride. The technical specification is going to tell you how that is accomplished. In this example, drawing the technical specification will introduce certain questions that are not answered in the functional specification – like how long should the trip take and how fast (or slow) do you want to go.

    I would definitely add “Technical Specification” into the outline – moving and surrounding “Technical Operating Environment Definition” with related details.

  29. Kevwe Ogomigo says:

    Very good summary. Thank you John for sharing.

  30. Layugan, Mc Kevin says:

    Okkkk…!!???
    nIce!!

  31. John Fairley says:

    Technical Specifications should be done in or along with the Functional Definition.

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  40. Paul Brown says:

    I wish I had been this organised when I was running my own website design business! We have now moved into Microsoft training and I find the work generally more rewarding. No matter how carefully we managed our projects we always seemed to get clients who would say “Oh, can you just add such and such” as the project neared completion and the date seemed to slip way beyond that projected. Just as a matter of interest, do you use Microsoft Project?

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