Three goals we strive for in the development of a web site

Site analysis results in a list of constraints as well as a list of requirements. In particular, a budget and time schedule must be met. For instance, a tax-preparation web site must be completed in time for the visitors to prepare their taxes by the due date. Although it might be ideal to limit costs by using a small project team, the realities of this particular situation are such that there must be a staff and budget adequate to complete the project within the given time constraint.

Ideally, there are three goals we strive for in the development of a web site:

- The fi nished product should provide value proportional to the incurred costs.

- The site should be completed in an appropriate time frame.

- The site should be of high quality.

Unfortunately, we can usually choose only two of those three goals; the third one, whichever of the three it is, always suffers. That is, perhaps we can build the site cheaply and fast, but then the quality will be compromised. On the other hand, if we are willing to increase the budget, we might be able to create the site quickly and still deliver high quality. In a nutshell, the site can be cheap to build, fast to build, or of high quality, but usually not all three.

Cost-benefi t analysis (deciding if the benefi ts provided are worthy of the attendant costs) plays a big part in the process of identifying constraints. Obviously, we want the benefi ts to exceed the costs. When the benefi ts are lower than the costs, however, that doesn't automatically mean we need to abandon the project. Perhaps we should fi rst attempt to sniff out any “gold plating” in the requirements: those bells and whistles that are not absolutely required but that increase the budget dramatically. These, then, are the areas we might trim in order to complete the project on time and within budget.

One thing to keep in mind is that we are not necessarily required to deliver the entire system at once. Often a phased rollout/launch, with critical areas of the site going online earlier than areas of lower priority, can relieve a tight development schedule or budget.

There may be other constraints beyond budget and time schedule, including legal, operational, technical, and design constraints. For example:

- A corporate site attempting to attract investors has legal constraints as to what it is allowed to say to those investors.

- A site accessing a database that is updated by several discrete corporate units has operational constraints that are not an issue if the database were centrally maintained.

- We might be limited in the number of people available to work on the development team or by the skill set of that development team.

- We might need to use an existing logo and branding, thereby dictating numerous design decisions, especially color scheme.

- There are any number of things that we might like to do on a web site that just are not technically possible in today’s web environment.

And of course, all such factors are best identifi ed early in the project.