web notes - a blog

As a career path, the web has one great advantage over all others - it’s publicly accessible. You can demonstrate your skills and allow everyone to view them, at any time.

If you’re going to do this, be ready to push your skills to the limit. Refine the code, over and over. Use validators like those at http://w3c.org, and tools like http://websiteoptimization.com to check your work. Test with different browsers.

If you’re using commercial, open source products, go to those sites and view some sites built with them. See what other people are doing. View their code to learn more. Join the forum, to both get help and contribute.

Be honest, if you’re an engineer, state that, and if you’re a designer say so. Most people aren’t experts in every skill required to deliver a great site.

Invest in a domain name and use it. Keep it professional. You can always create a subdomain or buy another domain to put fun stuff up.

If you are a recruiter or HR person and you receive a resume for a web position that doesn’t include sample URLs, ask for them and have your web team review them. You will have a chance to evaluate a candidate’s work before you ever speak to them. Check the copyright dates to ensure you’re looking at recent work.

… but to build a robust site in a timely manner which is cost-effective to maintain requires a fairly high level of skill, and careful management.

• The best sites are built by teams.
• The best sites usually have powerful applications behind them.
• The best sites adhere to standards and coding practices.
• The best sites have complex architectures that allow them to be managed efficiently.
• The best sites meet the objectives of the customer and the results can be measured.
• The best sites are delivered on time and under budget, successful for all parties.
• The best sites mature and change, gracefully.
• The best sites are monitored for reliability and security.

Alot! Most of it is time, and time is money. It can be very difficult to account for the costs, since they are not tangible objects.

First, you need a name - so you’ll have to spend the time to choose one and then register it.

Then, you need a server, for the site and for email (it may be the same server), a server is the computer that delivers the site. You can put one in your office, choose a hosting company, or let a company that builds your site handle the hosting. Each has its own costs and benefits. They are offered in decreasing levels of skill requirement, but increasing cost. This is a recurring cost, it will affect the reliability of the site and the cost of maintenance. It also affects the level of control you have over your site and system. You also need an Internet connection - and a high-speed connection to support a busy server may be very expensive.

The site has three main components, design, content, and logic. They can be provided by different organizations. If one company has many sites with designs you like - get an estimate from them for a design. Whether you purchase just a visual image or the HTML/CSS code must be specified. Content is often best managed by an application - either a blog or content management system (CMS). That can be done in house, with some training, or outsourced. The logic may be the blog or CMS. Don’t build one - buy it, or use an open source solution. Visit some sites and run through the demos, see if the person who will manage the content likes the applications as well. Integrating the application and the design should be done by a company with experience with that product. This applies to ecommerce solutions as well.

Be prepared to clearly state what you are trying to do. Try to stay focussed on that objective throughout the project, changes can be very expensive, for all parties. If you don’t have a clear objective, it may be better to wait until you do.

Any successful transaction relies on the following:

1. Clearly defining the product or service to be delivered
2. Understanding what it costs to deliver it
3. Doing the work well

Easy mistakes:

• Optimism - unrealistic agreements
• Scope creep - allowing the product or service to change beyond what can be absorbed by the cost of delivery
• Pursuit of perfection - failing to limit the delivery to what was agreed upon in an effort to do an outstanding job at the expense of the provider
• Incompetence - inability of the provider to deliver due to lack of skill
• Poor cost control - this begins with the estimate or price. It must reflect the actual cost to deliver the product or server. Through the entire project, those costs must be tracked to keep the project within the budget and provide data for future projects
• Team failure - Failure of the team to work cohesively

Titles and roles define an organization.

Titles reflect the responsibilities, and there is a fairly standard hierarchy:

• President
• Vice President
• Director
• Manager
• Team Leader/Senior Team Member
• Team Member

These titles confer implicit authority, and if enforced by upper management, explicit authority.

It is extremely important to match the title with the skills of the holder, in order to balance the team. For example, if there is a junior manager, and a senior technical person, all parties should understand when the manager’s decision is final, and when the senior person is responsible for ensuring that the best technical approach is followed. Failure to establish these roles prevents the important checks and balances of a strong team, or creates an environment where team members are bypassed to avoid conflict, to the detriment of the project.

Titles which are inflated, for any reason, defeat the organization. Even if it is an interim assignment, if the title holder is not well-suited for their post, problems will arise. An undeserved promotion is difficult to undo, and can have serious long-term consequences.

It’s impossible to construct the perfect team, so in addition to the formal assignment of titles and roles, the team members’ strengths and weaknesses must be considered.

The starting point should be the company’s mission statement. After all, the objective of the team is to fulfill the mission of the company, or some element of it. Once the mission is broken out into tangible pieces, identifying who is best at delivering them is next. Care should be taken to ensure the flow of deliverables is properly managed by those best qualified.