Planing - Make sure your project/Homepage proceeds in an orderly and efficient manner

While formalizing the big picture of your Web strategy, you can begin staging the development of the project components in order to decide the sequence in which the parts should be built. Generally, the order in which project elements are built and implemented will depend first on time constraints and then on the relative value of individual components. For instance, if the product needs to launch in four weeks but the entire build time is two months, you'll have to decide which parts are absolutely necessary for the project to launch and which are secondary or tertiary and, thus, can be built later.

To return to our example of the coffee table company expanding into new markets, part of our Web strategy includes adding a new area on the site for bar stools. As part of our implementation on the front end of the site, we might specify a top-level directory, subdirectories for wooden and metal stools, and specific product pages. For the company's own administrative use, we'll also need to build a tool that will give us statistical data on sales as well as the ability to track orders, process payments by check, communicate with specific groups of customers, and perform a variety of other tasks.

First, list all of the individual components of the project:

• Front-end site components
  top-level bar stool directory
  wood bar stool subdirectory
  wood bar stool product pages
  metal bar stool subdirectory
  metal bar stool product pages
  order-processing component
• Administrative components
  statistics section
  order records
  payment processing
  order fulfillment
  customer communication center--batch and automated e-mail functionality
  search
  Next, order the components based on the relative value of each element (this order will vary based on your own project analysis):
• front-end product pages
  front-end order-processing component
  admin. order records
  admin. payment processing
  admin. order fulfillment
  front-end subdirectories and top-level directory
  admin. search functionality
  admin. customer communication elements
  admin. statistics section
  After staging the project to determine the build sequence, establish how much the project will cost and how long it will take to complete
  

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