Week 4 - Plan, Plan, and More Planning

I am finally starting to see the shape of this project. I didn't realize the amount of planning that goes into a new website--before any design or coding even begins.

Thanks to the reading I did last week, I was able to complete a Design Document and a rather lengthy Project Plan, both with Microsoft Word.

The Design Document provided a brief audience analysis, project scope and purpose, and some high- and mid-level goals for the project.

Among other things, creating the Project Plan enabled me to define the scope of the project, establish a list of deliverables, and begin creating some tools I'll use throughout the project, like a timeline and a content inventory log. I will use these last two continuously during the project to keep on schedule and to keep tight control of the content before it has a chance to get out of control (where is that image stored, what is it called, where is it used in the website?)

The Project Plan required me to think about site architecture, which are two words I've never used together before, and site design. As I begin the design phase of the project next week, I will be able to fill in more of this data on the Project Plan. The omissions to these sections, now, reflect my inexperience with website design and development, but it'll get completed soon enough in the next few weeks.

Both the Project Plan and the Design Document will eventually end up on the Development page of the website, but sometime next week I will try to figure out how to add these documents to this blog for quick reference.