the agile approach: getting the website you want, on time. · agile project management, and a...

THE AGILE APPROACH:

Getting the Website You Want, On Time. How to Manage your Web Development Project Following the Agile Approach.

Table of Contents

Introduction Leading Your Own Project 1

Chapter One The Timeline of Your Project, From Scoping to Launch 2

Chapter Two

Building Your Project–The Agile Approach 7

Chapter Three

The Essential Role of the PM–Communication Mediator 11

Chapter Four

What You Can (and Should) Expect From Developers 13

Chapter Five

After Your Website is Live–Providing Ongoing Support 15

THE SOLUTION

Agile project management, and a guided

collaboration. Whether you’re an expert

web developer yourself or new to

the territory, this white paper details an

approach that utilizes traditional work-back

calendar schedules and Agile management

to help you ensure your project is done on

time, without any surprises.

THE PROBLEM

Am I getting the most important features

built? Who’s responsible for what? How is

my budget being spent? Where exactly is

your project right at this moment?

A lack of visibility throughout your website’s

development makes you feel as if it’s

completely out of your hands. You want

to be sure that everything is being built to

your exact specifications, but you don’t

know how to communicate that to your

developers and you aren’t sure what they’re

currently building for you.

!

beargroup.comPage 1 | The Agile Approach: Getting the Website You Want, On Time.

About this Whitepaper

What?

This white paper details an approach to web development management

that ensures your website meets all expectations and is completed on

time. By identifying key roles and responsibilities, timelines, and optimal

methods of communication, this white paper will help prepare you for

successfully completing any current or upcoming website projects.

Why?

All too often we encounter prospective clients who have felt completely

isolated from the progress of their project. And when deadlines are

missed or the final deliverable is different than what was expected, it’s

incredibly frustrating. To avoid any unwelcome surprises, our team has

developed a collaborative, Agile approach to web development.

Who Wrote This?

Bear Group is a web development firm based in Seattle, Washington.

Since 2007, we have worked with marketing leaders to bring their digital

strategies forward and help their businesses thrive. Some of our clients

include other local Washington businesses such as Amazon, Tableau,

Oiselle, Seattle Chocolates, and Chihuly.

How Can Bear Group Help?

As a web development firm, one of our primary offerings is our ability to

support, guide, and provide competence in the area of web technology,

allowing clients to hold the reigns of their own projects. We have years

of experience marked by thousands of successful launches. For website

administrators searching for a web development firm that will involve

them in the building process, or are curious about a guided approach to

web development, this white paper should provide a layout of what you

can expect from the experience.


INTRODUCTION:

Leading Your Own Project

Your own technical background should not be a factor when it comes to

being involved with your own web development project, but it often is a

point of anxiety.

You may not feel comfortable weighing in on which javascript framework

is used, or whether or not your website is built on a modular system. What

you care about is the finish line–a successful implementation of your

ideas, well-built, and right on time. And the best way to guarantee that

happens is to be sure you’re involved in your project.

Instead of submitting your requests to developers, like throwing your ideas

over a wall and catching a finished website when it’s thrown back over a

few months later, you should be engaged with each step of the process,

having a voice in what’s prioritized and how your project is managed.

In this white paper, we’ll walk you through the approach that our

clients have found to be the most successful. Following your lead, your

development team can build enterprise-scale websites while maintaining

great communication.


CHAPTER 1:

The Timeline of Your Project, From Scoping to Launch

While every project is different, our approach to website building follows

a timeline that starts with carefully scoping out your project–establishing

exactly what your developers will be building and how long it will take–

and ends with the launch of your fully completed website. Here’s what

you can expect from your first meeting, to the minute your new website

goes live.

The Scoping Phase–Discovery

There are multiple team members involved in the scoping of any project:

The Project Leader

You–Your knowledge of your customers, your business, your marketing goals

and metrics, timeframes, and other internal and external drivers are what shapes

the entire project.

Design

Responsible for your website’s look and feel, and often its navigation layout.

Front-end Development

Responsible for functionally enabling the UX and website design. They build for

consistency and functionality inside a fully mobile responsive design.

Sr. Developers or Solution Architects (SA’s)

Responsible for constructing your website’s build–connecting integration points,

data migrations, API work, building custom modules, customizing your website’s

core structure.

Web Ops

Responsible for working with your IT to manage complex hosting and security


situations. They ensure your team knows what is necessary to protect against

website vulnerabilities.

Analytics

Responsible for setting up your website’s system tracking.

PM’s

Responsible for understanding the details of all other team members.

They schedule meetings, coordinate with the Project Leader, and maintain

an overarching view of the project to keep it aligned with your vision and

completed on time.

The project scoping phase is dedicated to breaking out your ideas into

actionable, web development tasks.

The final result of the project scoping phase is a scoping document or task

breakout that clearly outlines major milestones, tasks to be completed, provides

you with a calendar, and establishes the deadline by which your website will go

live.

Content Strategy

Understanding your brand position, key messages, target audience, and

competitive landscape will help your web development project go smoothly.

Because a deep understanding of the company is critical, the content strategy

is set internally by your marketing team, external content strategists, writers,

editors, or dedicated information architecture specialists. Laying the foundation

of a strong, ongoing content strategy involves a clear understanding of your

brand, your messaging goals, market research, and insights from competitors’

sites–all information that your internal team will have the most thorough

knowledge of.

Your content should dictate the design–not the other way around.

It's easy to fall into the trap of creating a sitemap, jump straight to design,

and then scramble to fill buckets with content once the site is done. The best

websites begin with a clear content strategy.


Design

For new websites, the design phase will establish the look and feel. This can

include wireframing, creating the user experience (UX), and determining website

user flow. Your website content informs the design and may be revised as new

design ideas surface.

If you choose a design firm separate from your chosen web development firm,

or you have your own in-house design team, your developers should collaborate

with your designers to provide feedback on the feasibility and cost of planned

features.

The Build

Your project is managed by the PM, but driven by a senior developer acting as

team lead. They drive the development work, and report back to the PM, who

then relays the information to you, as the project progresses.

During this time the functional aspects of your website are being built,

integrations are being connected, UX elements are being designed, and each

component is being made alongside your web designers in order to implement

their layouts.

Milestones are worked toward and met throughout the project, but we

recommend that you don’t scope out every single task from the beginning.

Web development, especially custom web development, is a creative process

that’s constantly evolving throughout the project. By maintaining a flexible

management style, we avoid architecturally planning out the entire development

plan in order to leave room for creativity.

QA

Throughout the entire building process, each project task is thoroughly

reviewed–either by you or the PM–before it’s marked as resolved. As code

moves between the developer’s local environment to stage servers, it’s checked

repeatedly there as well. At the end of your project, your PM and Quality Analyst

should thoroughly review your website to ensure the code is correct and your

website is completely devoid of issues.


Your involvement with QA is another decision that you are free to make. While

some clients like to be involved throughout the project, regularly reviewing tasks

alongside the PM, some clients may come in just at major milestones to ensure

their deliverable matches their expectations.

Launch

Once your website is finished, how and when you launch your new website is

entirely up to you and your team. The deployment should be scripted, and the

production environment thoroughly tested well ahead of launch.

Plan for about 10 days to adjust post-launch. We recommend including that time

period into the budgeting of any larger project so that any immediate concerns

or adjustments can be made.


Your Map to Managed Web Development

Below, we’ve outlined a typical web development timeline. While each project

is unique, this approach ensures that the process and (more importantly) the

progression of your web development project will proceed with complete

transparency throughout, be finished on time, and will be delivered exactly as

detailed.

ProjectScoping

StagingEnvironments

Web Design

WebsiteStructuring

Security QA

OngoingSupport

Launch

Web Designer

TPM

Lead Dev

Client

WebOps

Lead Dev

Sr. Dev

Designer

Front-end Dev

WebOps

Client

TPM

Lead Dev

Lead Dev

TPM

Client

Lead Dev

Client

TPM

BUILDPM

Client

Process of Development


CHAPTER 2

Building Your Project:The Agile Approach Defining Project Tasks, Prioritizing Them

You’re going to have a lot of ideas about what you want your website to look like. But in order

to make sure that everything is accomplished thoroughly and that your project is finished

within the right time frame, an important part of collaboration is turning those ideas into

actionable development tasks, and then prioritizing them.

The Agile Methodology

In general, modern development shops follow

the Agile development methodology (here’s

the original Agile Manifesto) with a focus on

embracing change through organized sprints,

and accelerating through tickets to deliver

functional, valuable websites.

The Agile style is optimal because of its

managed flexibility. Your project is scoped

out from the beginning, but planning it out

down to the smallest detail is impossible when

development is constantly changing. It’s difficult

following a project that’s managed too strictly,

and can cause friction with your developers.

If at some point in your project, your team

realizes something along the lines of “this isn’t

going to work the way we thought it would,” it’s

better to be flexible and find a new and better

solution, rather than waste too much time on a

wrong approach.

Our approach at Bear Group follows the

prescribed Agile approach, but we also recognize

business runs on calendars and deadlines, so we

follow a milestone calendar that enables us (and

you) to keep the project on task and finished by

the determined deadline.

Jira – Project Management Tools

At the beginning of your work, your project is

broken down into a series of individual tasks.

Those tasks are then scheduled out week by

week. Each development agency may have their

own method for handling tasks–for example, our

team uses the tool, Jira by Atlassian.

Jira is an issue and project tracking software that

we use to schedule sprints, track their workflow,

and mark them for QA and completion. Jira is

extremely detailed, and lists all of the technical

communication being passed between

developers and PM’s. This level of detail can

http://agilemanifesto.org/


be a little overwhelming for clients, but it also

provides the most accurate window to the

progress of your project. You are given a Jira

login at the start of your project, and at any

point can track the work of your project by

seeing which tasks are completed, in progress,

undergoing QA, or are queued to begin.

What is a Ticket?

A Jira ticket is an individual task that

includes information such as the project

issue, a short description of what’s required

from the developer, the type of issue

(maybe it’s a bug that was found in the

system, or an improvement that needs to be

made), its priority, and its current status. This

tells you who’s owning each individual issue,

where it’s at, and how it’s being carried out.

Who Writes Tickets?

You (the client and project leader), the PM,

and the developers are all capable of writing

additional tickets and creating new tasks

throughout the project.

As you check in on your project, or sit in

weekly demo meetings with your PM, you

can create new tickets that address issues

that you’d like your developers to work on.

Points to Consider When Writing Jira Tickets

PRIORITY

There are 5 different levels of priorities:

Blocker: This is an emergency, and

considered an issue that makes the website

completely unusable or would block your site

going live.

Critical: Should be addressed immediately,

but is less serious than a blocker.

Major: Is marked as a top priority.

Minor: An issue that needs to be addressed

at some point during the project, but for which

there’s absolutely no urgency.

Trivial: Something that has interested you

that you want to address in future projects.

A Trivial ticket may end up in your backlog and

be addressed after the completion of the current

project.

When writing tickets, it’s important to keep in

mind what the priority communicates to your

developers, and how your tickets may affect the

overall pace of their work. If you are constantly

submitting tickets for minor issues marked as

blockers, it can cause confusion.

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STATUS

A benefit of Jira is that it communicates between

the different members of your team the current

status of each issue, and who needs to be

responsible for it. For example, if the developer

has completed their work and assigned the ticket

to the PM for final review, the PM will update

the ticket’s status to indicate whether it needs

more work or is completed. If you are dealing

with a ticket yourself, make sure that you update

its status to indicate where it should be in the

pipeline, and who needs to be responsible for it.

TYPE

There are 3 different ticket types:

Bug: This is an issue that affects the

functionality of the website, like a cart that’s

constantly emptying or a webform that won’t

submit.

Improvement: This could be a change you

want to see made with the stylistic aspects of

your website, such as updating the theming layer

or altering the font.

New Feature: As you watch your website

come together and evaluate your own goals

for it post-build, you may find that you want to

add additional features to it, such as a martech

integration.

A Word About Calculating Time Estimates Time is an important factor, both when

estimating the cost of your project and

determining your own deadlines. Having a hard

deadline for your project and establishing check-

ins and other milestones will help you track your

project’s progress. You can track the timeline of

your project through several different ways.

Before a single line of code is written, you, the

developers, and the PM break apart every aspect

of your project down to the task level. From this

point, it’s your decision how those tasks will be

prioritized, and what will get done in the space

of time you have determined.

Your PM can provide you with time estimates,

but that’s how they should be regarded–as

estimates, not promises. Time estimates are

like forecasts, no project in software is the

same and neither is a developer. Specific hour

estimates are unrealistic, and leave no room for

adaptability. Dates are still important to Agile

because you need to be able to track milestones

and have a concrete project end date, but your

development team estimates what they think

will be delivered and do the most valuable things

first. This way, even if a few things can't squeeze

in, your project is still ”shippable".

Jira is an incredibly helpful tool that enables

better project communication, ensures that

someone is responsible for each individual task

at all times, and keeps your build running along

smoothly. Your involvement with Jira

completely depends on how involved you want

to be. If you’d prefer managing your project

through your PM–who can create tickets for

you–you can. If you’d like to be more directly

involved yourself, checking the status of your

project everyday and monitoring the progression

of tickets, you can as well.

The benefit of Jira is that it provides you with

a choice, and that it creates total transparency.

This is how you stay in the driver’s seat of your

own project.

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CHAPTER 3

The Essential Role of the PM–Finding Your Communication Mediator The first challenge in any web development project is communication. You may have a certain

intent for your website (“We want webforms to submit into our CRM,” or “We want the ability

to create custom blog posts”) but without specific direction, your developer will have a hard

time interpreting your intent (“Where do they need that integration point?” or “What aspect of

a blog post page do they want the ability to customize?”).

What you need is a translator, someone to mediate communication between you and your

developers. That’s where your Project Manager comes in.

Each of these are questions that can be easily answered by your project mediator, the Project

Manager.

Who Is The PM?

The Project Manager maintains an overarching

perspective of the entirety of your project,

strategizing how to manage developers and

structure your project to carry out your intent.

Where each developer is heads down in their

own part of your project, the Project Manager

oversees all moving parts.

A PM will be present at your very first meeting,

will conduct check-ins with you throughout

the building process, runs through final User

Acceptance Testing with you, and will see you

through to your website’s launch.

They know your business, your needs, and your

priorities. For you, this means that you have

someone that you can catch any time you need

them and get updates on your project.

Who’s owning this? What’s the timeframe for this task?

Can you ensure what you say will get done?

“ “ “ “

“ “


What Do They Do For My Project?

Your PM acts as a mediator between you and the developers assigned to your project,

translating your requests into actionable tasks for the developers. The PM is the glue that holds

all elements of your project together, communicating between you and your development

staff, design firms, and anyone else involved in your project. They handle all project meetings,

orientations, scheduling, and project planning.

Here are some of the responsibilities handled by PM’s:

Coordinating Resources

There are many people (including yourself) that

are involved in a web project. Content strategists

and managers, graphic designers, information

architecture managers, interaction designers,

solution architects, front-end coders, back-

end coders, web operations, QA guides, and

technical writers–to name a few. The PM’s main

function is the coordination of all of these folks.

Weekly Demo Meetings

Your PM is responsible for scheduling weekly

meetings to allow you to check in on your

project. During these meetings, they will present

weekly status reports that show you your

project’s progress, walking you through what has

been built so far.

Lead Review Cycles

As each part of your project is completed, it is

sent through a final QA. Your PM finalizes the QA

to make sure everything is sound, and aligned

with your intent.

Training and Documentation

Your PM will train you and your team, walking

you through your website to show you how to

manage different tasks. They will also provide

documentation that can be used as a guide for

additional training or reference.

Create Project Backlog

If, as you work on a current project, additional

ideas for future projects surface, your PM will

keep track of those ideas in a wishlist, and can

help you scope out future projects or recurring

development check-ins with our development

team.

Go-Live Checklist

Before your website goes live, the PM performs

a series of tests to ensure the front-end (UX) of

your website is working smoothly. Depending

on your project, this can mean submitting test

orders on your eCommerce site, testing account

login and creation, testing all forms (webforms)

and verifying receipt, and reviewing the admin

panel (e.g. can create content). PM’s often

coordinate with you throughout the process as

well, and may encourage you to run the tests

yourself for User Acceptance Testing.


CHAPTER 4

What You Can (and Should) Expect From Developers Project Scoping and Finding Creative Solutions

Like your PM, some members of the development team will be there with you

from the beginning. Although the PM manages the project approach and you

retain the ability to make final decisions, it’s the developers that bring in their

expertise to find creative project solutions.

Here is what you should never hear from your developers: “It can’t be done.”

So often we’re meeting with clients dealing with unwieldy or outdated systems

because they were told the updates they wanted to make were impossible.

Web development is like any other constructive process–some avenues may be

closed off to you, but there’s always an achievable solution. If you’re working

with a developer that doesn’t help you find that solution, you may need a better

guide.

Your developer should act as your solution architect. After initially scoping your

project, your developers will present you with a few different approaches that

you can choose from. Your PM will walk you through each proposal, and may

even make a recommendation. After you’ve chosen how you’d like your project

to proceed, your developers will begin the build.

During the Build

At the beginning of your project, your website has been broken down into

a backlog of individual tasks. A milestone calendar will specify deadlines

throughout the project, and tasks will be assigned to sprints, which usually

range between one and two weeks long.

A week before the sprint starts, your PM meets with you to decide what to work

on next, assigning that week’s tasks together. The developers’ take into account

which tasks have been marked as priorities.


During this building stage, you can also submit tasks into the backlog as your

project is being built for issues that you’ve noticed. These usually include details

like:

• The Task Description • Type

• Priority • Acceptance Criteria

• Location

A Word About Environments and Safe Coding Methods

An environment is where your website is being hosted. As your project is being

built, code is being moved around between different environments. This gives

developers a place to work on your website where they can safely build and test

functionality without being visible to your users.

During the project, your web developers are working in local environments on

their own machine. Each developer has a full virtual server running on their

computer with an installation of your website. This provides them a safe place to

work without worrying about making mistakes on your servers.

After their work is completed, there is a deployment (called a code push) of

code moving from the developer’s local environment to a staging environment

(only you and other administrators can see). Then, at the final completion of

your project, the entire website is moved to the live environment (what users

see).

This maintains consistency between development environments and also

provides your developers, PM’s, and Quality Analyst with an additional QA

opportunity. Before any task is marked as completed, it is reviewed by you, a

Quality Analyst, and a PM.


CHAPTER 5

Wrapping Up Your Project Defining Project Tasks, Prioritizing Them

At the end of your project, there are few things to consider.

1. Your Website Can Always Be Improved

We recommend making a plan for ongoing development that ensures your

website stays as up to date as possible. For some of our clients, this means

our team addresses a backlog of items every month. For others, we make

annual updates to their overall web presence. But what scheduling ongoing

development ensures is that you never fall behind. User experiences, SEO

practices, and even security patches are constantly evolving, and your website

will need to be updated.

2. RACI–Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed

A website is dependent on many different, interacting, supportive pieces, from

the CMS platform that provides you with a content management interface, to

the hosting service that keeps your website online. If a problem occurs on your

website, the best way to fix it is to know exactly who to get in contact with. This

is why during development projects, we encourage clients to make a RACI matrix

in order to track who is responsible for what on their website.

Throughout the duration of your project, you’ll have access to your website even

as it comes together, but at the conclusion of the project our PM’s will walk you

through the administration of your website.

| How to Evaluate Website Technology/Platforms


About Bear Group

Bear Group specializes in working together with marketing leaders to build

custom websites. Each member of our development staff is a senior in

their field, and our digital project managers are certified Scrum Masters

with years of experience leading projects to successful launches.

Founded in 2007, Bear Group has spent the last decade partnering with a

long list of industry experts. We’re fortunate to use our expertise to back

the ambitious, digital strategies of industry leaders.

We are a team. Each member of Bear Group is passionately involved in

their field. We take pride in what we do and greatly enjoy bringing life

to the digital strategies of our clients and easing pain points with quality

code.

We always look forward to engaging with new clients. Please feel free to

connect with us anytime for a free consultation at:

https://www.beargroup.com/contact

Best of luck in your upcoming web development project!

The Bear Group

beargroup.com

[email protected]

Bear Group, Inc.

2302 Nob Hill Ave N

Seattle, WA 98109

(206) 973-7940

the agile approach: getting the website you want, on time. · agile project management, and a...

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