Hello, this is Kamii from the production department.
This is the sixth installment of the "Professional Manager School" series.
In the past five articles, we have discussed website development and production projects from a quality control perspective, including standard models and quality management systems.
This time, I'd like to change my perspective and take a bird's-eye view of a website development and production project, in order to "understand what happened before and after the project."
Series Table of Contents
1. About the development process model (Published on April 21, 2017)
2. About WBS Construction Part 1: Establishing a Project Framework (Published June 15, 2017)
3. Building a WBS: Part 2: Creating a Schedule and Budget (Published on August 22, 2017)
4. Basic knowledge of quality control Part 1 QCD (Quality, Cost, Delivery) (Published on October 18, 2017)
5. Basic knowledge of quality control Part 2: Standardization and quality management systems (Published on February 10, 2018)
6. Know the background of the project (←this time)
Introduction
We will take a bird's-eye view of the projects that Monosus, a web production company, undertakes and organize them in chronological order. Based on this, we will look at adjacent projects before, after, and to the left and right of web production.
1. Know the "nearby" of the project
The development and production of the website renewal project will begin after a period of considering commercialization (business planning), formulating a business plan (budget planning), deciding on commercialization, and selecting a contractor.
Many companies spend more than a year preparing budgets for projects with development costs in the millions or tens of millions of yen. In addition to the development and production budget, budgets are also required for the client's project team, as well as for infrastructure construction and workflow renewal, which will be described later.
In other words, a site development and production project is just one part of a website renewal project .
In the renewal of large-scale websites, it is common to launch separate projects for each category of information to be transmitted, such as product information, sales support, after-sales service, company information, recruitment information, etc. (Sometimes projects are further subdivided by product area.)
This is because, apart from the webmaster who is responsible for maintaining and managing the entire site, updating the site requires coordination with the business processes of departments in charge of product branding, sales promotion, customer support, recruitment, etc.
2. Know what's going on behind the scenes
The post-renewal site will have different production specifications and structure from the current site. Also, depending on the renewal development specifications, the work flow for updating the site may be significantly different.
The department in charge of each business decides what information to make public on the corporate website, such as product information, sales support, after-sales service, company information, and recruitment information.
for example,
- Product Information: Development Department/Product Planning Department (Design Department)
- Sales support, after-sales service: Sales department
- Company Information: General Affairs Department
- Recruitment Information: Human Resources Department
- Site maintenance: System department
In this way, responsibilities are often divided.
In cases where branding by the product planning department is important for product information, production companies with strong design planning capabilities may be involved. In such cases, a large degree of freedom in the production specifications may be required. On the other hand, you may be able to let go of the management of production quality.
On the other hand, if the sales department aims to improve sales support, after-sales service, and response speed, they will need a tool that is convenient as an extension of their daily work, without having to worry about the technology required for web production.In addition, they may be required to link data with business management systems such as customer management systems and inventory management systems.
It is important to compile these business requirements in collaboration with the client's project members and incorporate them into development specifications.
3. Know your parallel projects
There may be other projects running in parallel that need to be coordinated with the website development and production project.
These include updating infrastructure environments such as web servers, and upgrading customer management systems to centralize the management of inquiries from the site. Updating infrastructure environments and upgrading customer management systems are projects undertaken by the client's system management department and the system vendor.
With the spread of smartphones, asynchronous processing using Javascript has become available in any environment. Therefore, it is becoming common to require that inquiries from websites, requests for various documents, and various applications be linked to the above systems.
In addition, branding strategies for product promotion may be revised in conjunction with website renewal. In this case, the product information on the website will need to be reviewed and approved by the product planning and design departments at the design and production stage.
When collaborating with another parallel project, a key point is how smoothly the client's project members can reach a consensus within the client's company.
This time, we took a bird's-eye view of the website renewal project and talked about projects related to site development and production that Monosus, a web production company, has taken on.
What is important in linking these adjacent projects is to reach an agreement in the early stages of the project (requirements definition, basic design) and to create a mechanism for collaboration.
From next time, I would like to talk about the importance of requirements definition and basic design in order to link adjacent projects, as well as points to keep in mind.
See you in July.