7 Crucial Things To Know When Managing Web Development Projects
Whether you’re a marketer, designer or web developer, client projects are part of your everyday life. No matter how daunting the task before you may be, you know you have the right skill set to tackle it head-on.
However, more often than not, it’s not the lack of skill or knowledge that leads to failure, but poor management of those projects.
There are tons of management tools that can aid you in battling these obstacles, but the sheer number can be more distracting than their potential usefulness.
Arguably, as a web development manager, you know the definition of peer pressure best. You’re establishing the foundation and the building blocks upon which designers, copywriters and others start their work.
It’s essential to develop technical skills that help you efficiently deliver quality work. The bigger the project is, the more important it is to develop project management skills.
Mismanaging a section of a project might have a domino effect, resulting in business failure. This necessitates the creation of a thorough project management plan aimed at assisting you in managing the entire project. You must devote time to creating this plan because it necessitates a complete presentation of data. To save time, go to Template.net to find simply editable project management plan templates that you can download and use in your next presentation. These free templates are professionally prepared and are available for free download in Google Docs, MS Word, and Apple Pages file formats. They are printed in US and A4 file sizes and are available in Google Docs, MS Word, and Apple Pages file formats.
To help you achieve them, together with the top web development companies in Chicago, we made a definitive list of 7 essential things to know when managing web development projects.
But first…
What Do We Mean by Managing Web Development Projects?
Even before this era of remote work, web development projects were often outsourced to staff across multiple time zones. This can be challenging for many reasons, but the main one is — meeting the deadlines.
You can’t simply walk over to them, give them a few encouraging words and continue with your day-to-day affairs, expecting tangible results.
The inability to meet a deadline, follow up with a project stakeholder, or mitigate any workflow issues leads to unhappy clients. Project management makes or breaks the project itself and the chance of repeat work and business growth.
To put it simply, managing web development projects is the way you organize and manage the time and resources required to complete a client project successfully.
Let’s get started.
- Identify the Goal of the Project
It goes without saying, but getting a clear understanding of the project’s ultimate goal and what the client wants is crucial. Whether you’re working on building a new eCommerce website, online news outlet or a brand-new killer app, project management starts before the work even begins.
You need to ask your client-specific questions — what they want and why they want it.
By identifying the goal, you can meticulously organize the project and avoid unnecessary and ultimately unwanted features or functions.
Asking the essential questions is also required to determine whether you can deliver what they want on time. Always keep a laser focus on what truly matters. If the main goal for a website is to generate leads, don’t add anything that doesn’t help you accomplish this.
Clarity is imperative! Vague descriptions may lead to unrealistic expectations, thus, unhappy clients.
Once you agree on deliverables, project timeline and establish baseline expectations, it’s time to adopt a proper management tool that best suits you, your team and project goals. There are many to choose from, but whichever methodology or planning framework you choose, stick to the initial plan as closely as possible.
Remember that project management is a collaborative effort. It needs continuous, clear communication between you, your team and the client. Communication starts at the kickoff meeting. It’s an opportunity to gather all project stakeholders at the same time so everybody involved will understand the goal and what is expected of them.
Aside from the initial introduction, project goal, and scope of work, the kickoff meeting’s main purpose is to establish the workflow, divide the roles and responsibilities, determine the next steps and give project stakeholders a chance to ask questions.
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2. Stop Using Email to Discuss and Track Project
Email is easy to use; it is convenient. But to track the progress and updates on a specific web development project, it is not the right tool. Quite the contrary, it has “failure” written all over it.
We’re all aware of the frustration caused by searching that one specific email, digging through inboxes and even spam, often in vain.
Not to mention the difficulties when you have to inform a new team member about the project. You can’t expect the added member to dive into the previous threads and to be on the same page as the rest of the team. Bottom line — when it comes to project management communication, e-mails are pointless and inefficient. Instead, opt for using tools like Asana, Trello, ClickUp, Basecamp, Teamwork, etc. Each of these project management tools is designed to streamline the process, guide your team and help you track project statuses, set milestones and meet deadlines.
3. Create and Manage Tasks in Your Project Management System
The aforementioned project management tools give you a clear insight into every aspect of the project IF you use them appropriately and educate your team members to do the same.
They are flexible, allow constant collaboration and offer a good understanding of where the project stands at any given moment.
The key to properly using these tools to their fullest is to break down the project into more manageable chunks, different tasks and subtasks and give them specific descriptions and instructions to assigned team members.
Take this blog post, for example. Think of it as one of the project tasks. What does it entail?
- Finding the keywords relevant to the topic
- Outlining the structure
- Writing the first draft
- Editing for proper grammar
- Finalization and publishing
Notice that every bullet point can be perceived as a subtask? Whether you assign every single one to, well, one person or appoint a content researcher, link builder, copywriter and editor to manage different stages, subtasks are easier to track, and they can be completed swiftly.
Remember to always assign a due date for each (sub)task so that your team knows when completion is expected and allows them to push the deadline if needed.
This way, you can track the progress of every task and find out why and where the progress is lagging. Then analyze the impact of every single task on the overall delivery of the project.
Set your tasks according to the priority in which they are needed, as setting priorities ensures that more important tasks are done first. After determining the order of priority tasks, it’s time to create milestones.
What are they? Milestones represent the completion of a group of tasks. They should be aligned with the final deadline and ensure everyone included feels motivated (including clients) by tangible results.
Once a task or group of tasks is done (after feedback and potential revisions), close them. This is somewhat of a web development basic hygiene practice. It acts both as a motivator while maintaining clarity on the project, often visually overloaded with various tasks.
4. Keep All Project Resources in One Place
Project-related files may include PDFs, Images, Wireframes, PSDs, Word Documents and more. They need to be readily available and accessible to everyone, whenever. Why?
Let’s go back to one of our previous points. You’re not going to share some essential files via e-mails, Slack, or any other file sharing platform just to locate, upload or send a file whenever somebody needs it.
The best method is to have them bundled up (in one of the folders of your chosen management platform), readily available to everyone. The same logic goes for project-related conversations. Your client’s preferred method of communication is probably going to be an e-mail, but from that point on, any important email you receive should be forwarded to your project management system.
This is especially helpful when you, as a project manager, are not readily available to provide instructions/feedback. Almost all of the top-rated management tools provide seamless integration with email, turning them into task notes.
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5. Be an Active Project Manager or Appoint a Dedicated Project Manager from the Team
Many people, even agencies, underestimate the role of a project manager. While developers, designers and other creatives are busy with their specific project tasks, PMs often go unnoticed.
Keep in mind that project managers are not there just to sell your business’ services to the client but are instrumental in getting stuff done.
Project managers keep complete track of the project, streamline the process, jump through the hoops and handle all workflow disruptions. Their key role is to keep stakeholders aligned, the project on track and ensure that the client has the latest updates regarding the project status.
This person is the cushion, the main contact between your team and the client that filters all communication while keeping an eye on the clock.
How a project manager handles workflow obstacles can make all the difference between a project staying or track, stalling or crashing and burning.
When a client becomes unresponsive, or a team member fails to deliver their work on time, you need someone to decide swiftly how best to proceed. These disruptions do happen; they are part of the PM’s everyday life, so it’s essential to be prepared for any scenario.
6. Monitor the Different Phases of the Project — Building/Optimizing/Finalizing
Once you lay a clear path in front of every team member and the building phase of a website project starts, your team will be focused on following the wireframe, creating the site’s layout, content, design, features, author boxes, etc.
In the meantime, the project manager’s focus must be divided between monitoring the progress, ensuring full adoption and understanding of the project management process, and removing any obstacles that team members have pointed out.
That obstacle can be anything that’s preventing a task from completion. It can be a lack of skill of a certain team member, a missing line of code, or a piece of content necessary to finalize the design and more.
When a team flags up a blocker, the project manager works with them to find a viable solution. Regular team meetings are essential throughout the building phase as they can point up to a blocker before it becomes an irreversible flaw.
When it comes to optimization, whether your team is testing responsiveness, page load speed or compressing visuals, this is the time to put your 100%. Your work is not done. Create new tasks, ensuring the project is up to the highest standards it can be.
Depending on the nature of the project, finalization and eventual launch may or may not be part of the management process. However, the work required in those processes can be massive.
Whether it’s initial testing, client training, or a foundational marketing project, management needs to ensure everything is operational to go live.
Your team may be working on one, if not all, of these steps. This can potentially make the project even more difficult to manage as minuscule adjustments can be more time-costing than the whole building process.
7. Expect and Embrace Changes
The website launch and all the work leading up to it is existing time for a web development team. However, it is still not a time for champagne, as this can be the most frustrating phase.
Websites are rarely successful right out of the gate, but they’ll get there with the proper foundation and guidance.
After it goes live, there are dozens of unchecked tasks remaining. Some of them may or may not include integrating with social media, analytics, heat maps, testing and updates.
With all the potential issues solved and updates implemented, you’ll be ready to hand the project, pardon, and website’s keys to a proud new owner.
Ideally, all of your work will go according to plan, the launch will be perfect, and nothing will have to be changed. The grim reality is that changes are part of every project. We’ve already mentioned that deliverables can be delayed, priorities slightly adjusted, and even the client may change his mind at the last second.
Learning how to expect and embrace those changes as you manage and wrap up client projects will help you become prepared for the future. Even if you’re working on something eerily similar to a job you’ve done before, there are tons of variables that change in between. No two web development projects will be identical. For example, website design trends are constantly changing, and there’s nothing you can do about it but adapt.
You can bet that in a few years, we’re all going to laugh at sleek, minimalist designs we’re proud of today. Just focus on providing real value and bringing your clients to the initial goal; everything else will eventually fall into place (with a little effort).
Conclusion
Managing web development projects can be tricky, but it is a skill that you can easily learn. Becoming a master, however, that juggles projects and tasks effortlessly takes time.
With the right mindset and appropriate tools deployed, you have a winning combination.
Some, if not all of our “lucky №7” tips can all be summed up to — preplan, plan and be prepared for things not going according to that plan.
Don’t leave anything to the imagination, and write down every single detail about the project before you even start working on it.
Alas, where’s the fun in successfully finishing the race (or better yet, marathon in this case) without a little sweat?
Author Bio
Mathew Reeves is experienced in Online Marketing. He writes for business and for pleasure. The content that Mathew puts out is mostly focused on strategic branding and other digital marketing trends. He is a huge people person who is passionate about travel and books and extremely to allergic to poor internet connection.
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