Hi, It's not design by committee -- they are your clients! 1) If you think there are some stakeholders not being represented (i.e. end users) and that it will help you do what you want, then find a way for their interests to be represented to support your position. Shouldn't be hard to push for consultation with other stakeholders, but admittedly this may be incredibly counter-productive if you end up having to create focus groups :-) 2) I'd also try to avoid group meetings -- i think you can get away with one group meeting at the beginning, particularly if it's to give an overview and how you're going to involve them in the process (of course that's not at this meeting :-) The rest of it should be done through documents -- it's much more efficient than oral communication and there's no confusion. 3) Requirements analysis is your friend, but do it one-on-one (divide and conquer). Meet only once or twice with each stakeholder (representative) if you can. Avoid discussions about anything in the web-space -- focus on processes, issues with the current site, existing "business" needs that could be better dealt with via the web. Social networking, blogging and web 2.0 aren't requirements, they're solutions to problems. 4) Keep requirements high-level: i.e. "the ability to communicate formally and in the timely fashion with stakeholders". 5) If there are consequences of their requirements, like "the need to communicate with stakeholders informally and daily", then that should be made clear in the document (i.e. will require 3 hours of managerial time daily). 6) If your requirements include webifying business (government) processes, then write them down in detail and include them in the requirements (and in these instances everyone involved needs to sign off on the process), 7) Get them to sign off on the requirements and later on the high- level design if needed and then get on with it -- the site will be better for the high-level work and there will be less frustrations later on...
-Craig On Sep 8, 3:50 pm, Paul Bennett <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > > Apologies for the cross post, but there are some great minds lurking out > there and I need access to all of them :) > > I work for a small .govt and have been charged with rebuilding the corporate > site (many years old - all static and pretty messy). > At first I thought myself and another developer could rebuild the site > quietly in the Ministries cms-of-choice (Drupal) and involve relevant > content editors along the way to inform the rebuild a bit. > I wrote a brief business case and originally was given the all-clear. > > Then it went to senior management and I've since been charged with forming a > project group with a represntative of every business group in the Ministry > and running the project via the group with everyone getting to pitch in > their 10c worth. > > I'm not overly excited, especially since I've seen firsthand how internal > politics and endless meetings can strecth out a project like this. Often the > the end result is something which meets everyone's perceived needs except > the users and ends up having abandoned features in a few months when the > people who are excited about "blogging" or "social networking" or "real-time > chat" realise the actually have to update content and can't be bothered. > > I've also seen great websites built on short timeframes and small budgets > where the project team was little more than a coordinator, a designer and a > developer or two. > > Seeing as it's unlikely that I'm going to be able to avoid the traditional > round-table project team thing, I'm looking for ways to get away from > brainstorming on a whiteboard to actually getting users to test and provide > feedback on the site as we go along. > > I'm leaning towards putting together some kind of usable prototype before > the project officially starts, so we have something to guide and base > decisions on, rather than things that sound fancy when spouted off in a > meeting room. > > Any ideas / pointers? > > Paul --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ NZ PHP Users Group: http://groups.google.com/group/nzphpug To post, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
