Project Management

How to manage a website development project

We are often asked about our approach to project management by new clients. There are a lot of methodologies for managing projects, and plenty of folks out there who just “wing it” at first. Solid project management ensures your project will contain the features you want, look the way you want, maintain your budget, and be completed on time – and makes the process of creating something new enjoyable.

Below, we have put together our approach to project management which includes the best of Agile, traditional calendar schedules, PM tools, and great people to guide it all. Time after time, using this approach has been key to successfully delivering projects to our clients on time and on budget.

Agile Development Approach

At I.T. SOLUTIONS, we provide a resource-based model for development that consists of dedicated teams to your project. We primarily follow the Agile development philosophy, mixed with a development roadmap that typically follows a milestone calendar.

Features of this style of development management include:

1. Ensuring a base level of dedicated time to focus on highest priority functionality
2. Simplifying administrative work and budgeting, since we agree ahead of time on monthly resource costs
3. Avoiding a long scoping phase at the beginning in order to budget at the task level
4. Minimizing project risk, as we are never more than a single sprint in
5. Allowing new features to be continually rolled out, as we employ a flexible, Agile-based development approach, often pushing new releases every two weeks
6. Avoiding in-scope/out-of-scope conversations
7. Supporting fluid communication and a strong partnership between our dev team and clients

Project Management

We rely heavily on the PMBOK guidelines from PMI(ProjectManagement Institute) to organize development work. We have detailed tickets outlining use cases and stories, followed by all tasks at a granular level that will accomplish that user story. Tickets are moved from the backlog into typically two-week development sprints. This planning is done every day by the Technical Project Manager and reviewed on at least a weekly basis with clients.

Change is expected during development, and the Agile approach embraces that reality. There is never a “not in scope” discussion to be had since the scope is only loosely set at the outset of the project and you are paying for total sprint time. We expect features to be re-prioritized and evolve. The discussion instead is with the time/budget available, which features are the highest priority, or should the project time be extended to make time for more features? PMBOOK enforces a good Agile project methodology and allows for a vibrant online communication channel throughout the course of the project.

We use ticket “types” to identify new feature requests, bugs, and general tasks and have a four-step workflow for all tickets — Open, In Progress, Ready to QA, Resolved. The Agile approach minimizes risk, as there is never a time when developers do not have a clear direction and they can never be more than 5 days into developing any one feature before it is reviewed or goes through a round of QA with the client.

We primarily use Agile methodology for its flexibility, but we make some adjustments to accommodate major milestones when needed

We maintain a strong calendar & major milestones – similar to a work back schedule approach from the marketing arena. We also do smaller scoping projects, when larger features are being discussed to outline options. These typically result in 3-5 page scope documents, the final versions of these get folded into a master functional spec. Clearly outlining the scope makes the project go more smoothly during Agile-based implementation. It’s kind of a step back to help with the leap forward. Focusing on the end result helps us make sure the outcome is correct for the clients needs, but can cause drawback for the client if this step is missed.

Technical Project Management & Consulting Services

Ultimately, it is the Technical Project Manager (TPM) who provides the glue, communicating between our development staff, clients, design firms, and any other stack holders involved in the project. They handle all project meetings, orientation, scheduling, and project planning.

These are seasoned veterans with many successful projects behind them. In the course of our work, they will always be sharing our best practices and experience gained across similar projects. This includes daily management, ticketing, internal developer stand-ups, sprint planning, regular weekly client meetings, weekly demos, and reviews, scheduling and resource planning.
Our TPMs are service-oriented, positive, proactive, and are able to react swiftly to meet client expectations. They wear many hats, but what clients notice most are strong project coordination, transparency, and dedication to getting the project to the finish line on time.