Web Project Management: Delivering Successful Commercial Web Sites

By Ashley Friedlein

Book Overview

Web Project Management presents a solid Web project management method for building commercial Web sites. Developed by pres.co, a leading interactive agency, this refined eight-stage approach lets you... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1558606785
• ISBN13: 9781558606784
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers
• Length: 344 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Destined to Become a Project Management Classic

I should have read this book three years ago. Web Project Management presents a solid Web project management method for building commercial web sites.The book reads as if Ashley Friedlein, the author made many of the same mistakes I made. The wisdom encapsulated between the covers of this well written, easy-to-understand volume will serve web site project managers for years to come.The author breaks web site construction into 4 distinct phases: Pre-production, Production, Maintenance and Evaluation. Pre-production is broken into 3 stages: Project Clarification, Solution Definition, and Project Specification. Pre-production ranks as the most important stage; it represents the time when you work out what is to be achieved and plan how you will do it.Production consists of the following stages: Content, Design and Construction, Testing, Launch and Handover. I found the author's attention to content complications particularly interesting. In my experience, content is the area where web site designers and builders are the weakest, yet plays one of the most critical roles in the users' return. Maintenance plays a critical role in the updating and evolution of the site, so that it can retain and grow its user base.The final phase, Evaluation, is something of great importance to site builders and clients. Clients are demanding their web sites provide a return on investment. Sites must perform a commercial as well as a branding and marketing function to justify continued investment. If a financial benefit can be established, it is much easier to receive continued funding for existing projects or to undertake new ones.If you are involved-however tangentially-with web site development and support, you owe it to yourself to have a well-worn copy of this book gracing your bookshelves. Friedlein writes from experience - and that experience will save you time, money and quite a few headaches.

The only effective approach I have come across

This book is not about project management. In fact, someone versed in the Project Management Institute's Project Management Body of Knowledge will cringe at some of the statements made in the book (more about that below). It is, however, about delivering successful commercial web sites and it provides the best approach I have ever seen.Here are some of the things that make this not only unique, but the most authoritative book I have read on the subject: (1) It is not an IT centric book that focuses on technical issues. The author brings to the forefront the real critical success factors in the form of four equal sets of requirements: commercial, creative, content and technical. In 2000 I was a member of a multi-million dollar dot com project team for a large international company, and from that experience I totally agree with the author's view. (2)The author manages to balance the time-to-market pressures that permeate commercial web projects with the by-the-numbers method imposed by IT. As such, this book addresses the development life cycle from inception to production by aligning implementation to development life cycle stages. It manages to accomplish this and still cut the project's cycle time by removing any fluff. What is fluff? The tons of non-essential paperwork produced by some of the larger consulting companies. What is not missing are the essentials, as evidenced by the repeated emphasis on testing, the attention given to configuration and change management, and the realities of post-implementation support. These are extremely important and are too often overlooked. (3) The project controls that are proposed in this book are exceptional. While the author muddles through stuff like the proper definition of critical path, he shows how to effectively control a project by managing to deliverables. Contrast this with the common mistake of managing to a schedule and you will see the real effectiveness of his methods. So, while he misses the mark on some project management fundamentals, he sure makes up for it in pragmatism. He also makes up for his "transgressions" by laying out a project roadmap that, if followed, will guarantee success. If we project management "purists" lighten up a bit while reading this stuff we might learn a trick or two.The big surprise is the author is not an IT professional - his background is TV producer! Or, perhaps it's not a surprise at all considering the fact that there is no room for failure or missed production schedules in the TV industry, while the IT profession is notorious for massive schedule and cost overruns. What impressed me greatly is the wide range of technical issues that are addressed: browser compatibility, content formats, scripting languages, etc. For someone without an IT background the author demonstrates a solid grasp of real-life issues and gotchas.Those of us in IT need to carefully read the parts that address creative and content management. We are used to working wi

Unhailed landmark of Web development

Rushing wildly to develop Web sites as fast as possible, the industry of Web development has until now avoided developing any standard work methods for itself. Now, Ashley Friedlein has filled that void with 302 pages of method, in a book titled Web Project Management. After you've bought it and studied it thoroughly you'll know how Web development should work. ArsDigita founder Philip Greenspun is correct in his back-cover declaration that "a lot of people will end up owing their jobs to this book".Make no mistake; it's a readable textbook with a few light touches, rather than an amusing memoir. The hyper-prosaic title reflects Friedlein's style. He has focused on the essentials. In doing so, he has nailed all four of the characteristics that a book of this type needs:* It covers Web project management from end to end. After pinpointing what makes a good project manager, it moves through project stages from preproduction all the way to post-project evaluation. The book's table of contents is itself a solid checklist of the tasks you'll need to cover in a typical Web project. * It covers issues in necessary detail. The pages on budgeting, for instance, include such issues as checking for software licensing gotchas like per-processor software pricing. There's a simple, sensible example of how to implement version control on project documents. Such detail is particularly important in a field like Web project management, which is recruiting from fields as diverse as C++ software development and TV journalism.* It's authoritative. Time and time again, Friedlein pinpoints the key issues in a specific Web project management task. His three-page table comparing the strengths and weaknesses of various site activity measures is the pithiest around. The section on that relatively little-known field called content management homes straight in in on the toughest issues - total cost of ownership, standards compliance and performance. In many places, he uses concepts (for instance, detailed technical specifications) established during the past thirty-odd years of software development. * It's realistic. Friedlein understands how unpredictable and changeable Web projects are. Rather than decrying the fact, he outlines ways of responding to change and spotting risk areas. This realism shows through clearly in his single, highly detailed and candid case study - an account of building [a web site]. It also shows through in countless specific pieces of well-informed advice. ("Usually the most time-consuming part of creating a database-driven Web application is getting the data itself in the specified format and structure and getting it clean.") Friedlein delivers these four essentials with a discipline which would win him respect from project managers in any industry. Yes, he makes the standard noises about Web project management's unique challenges. But he also borrows extensively from the wisdom and rigour which software project managers have developed over the pa

I'd give it six stars!

This has been the best piece of literature on Web Project Management that I've found anywhere. It provides a proven method you can feel confident to apply in your Web projects, and goes over a case study where it is applied.

A pure focus on web project management - buy it!

This book is great, and will definitely help me do a better job as a web project manager. Friedlin's writing style is informative and easy to understand - the book is hard to put down! The examples presented are real-world. I've lived through several similar project ups & downs described in the book. This should be required reading for anyone in the field.