How to Apply Project Management to Your Website
Incorporating project management into your website development is crucial for efficiency and success. Drawing from my experience as a former Project Manager and a current webmaster, I’ll guide you through practical steps to streamline your website projects.
From setting clear objectives to assigning roles and tracking progress, this article will provide actionable insights.
What it is?
Project management for website owners means planning, organizing, and overseeing all aspects of maintaining a website. It’s critical to its success.
It’s about setting clear goals, timelines, and budgets. It helps streamline tasks, from content creation to design and development and ensures that they align with your vision.
Effective project management ensures that your website is user-friendly, up-to-date, and optimized for search engines. It minimizes errors, maximizes efficiency, and helps you meet deadlines.
It not only simplifies your processes, but also improves the quality of your content and the engagement of your team.
Methodologies
Most website owners use Agile methodologies such as Scrum or Kanban. Yet, some may prefer Waterfall, especially for a website’s initial launch.
Scrum
It breaks the project into small time frames called “sprints,” typically one to four weeks long. The goal is to get as much work done as possible in that time. The goal is to improve communication, get results faster, and be able to adapt to changing requirements.
To use Scrum, form a cross-functional team, prioritize tasks, and set clear goals. Hold daily stand-up meetings to track progress and identify roadblocks. Review and adjust your approach regularly based on feedback.
This agile methodology keeps your site dynamic and responsive to the ever-changing demands of the Internet.
Kanban
Kanban is a visual method of project management. It helps streamline tasks and maintain a consistent workflow. The main benefit is transparency, as it provides a clear view of work in progress.
To use Kanban, create a board with columns representing different stages of the project. Tasks move from “To Do” to “In Progress” to “Done”.
The difference with Scrum is its flexibility; there are no fixed timeframes or sprints. Instead, tasks are completed as capacity allows. Kanban is ideal for ongoing website maintenance and content creation, making it easier to prioritize and adjust tasks on the fly.
Waterfall
Waterfall is a traditional project management approach that contrasts with agile methods such as Scrum and Kanban. For website owners, it is a linear, step-by-step process. First you define requirements, then design, develop, test, and finally deploy.
Each phase must be completed before moving on to the next, making it difficult to make changes once a phase has begun. Waterfall works well for well-defined, static projects, but it can be less adaptable for dynamic websites.
Unlike agile methods, where adjustments are made throughout, waterfall requires thorough planning up front and strict adherence to the initial plan, which may not suit rapidly evolving web projects.
Steps
You can apply these steps to any of the above methods.
1. Collect information
Gather all available information. Conduct market research and talk to your stakeholders. This includes gathering information from SEO tools, niche experts, or your own team.
Information is power. It will help you make better decisions and identify problems before they happen.
2. Identify the Goal
The key to successful projects is to focus on a single goal. It could be a website launch, a link building campaign, a new revenue stream, product development… You can even treat each article or blog post as a project in itself!
The important thing is to set clear expectations. Write down what you want to accomplish and never deviate from it. You can change the process and even the scope, but the overall goal must be clear from the start.
3. Determine the Scope and Estimate Timelines
Setting the goal will ensure that the project results are successful. But proper scope and schedule estimates will ensure that you don’t go crazy in the process.
You need to have an idea of what the project will cost you. Not just money, but time and headaches. You don’t have to have it all figured out yet, but it will help you along the way.
4. Host a kickoff meeting
Now it’s time to sit down and put all the pieces together. Whether you have a team or are alone, this is an important step.
Share all the information and ask for opinions. It’s time to listen, not talk. Let your team give you insights and potential pitfalls. Ask them for their thoughts on your scope and timeline stimuli. Re-evaluate everything.
This will help you define what the roadmap will look like, how your team feels about it, and how you should approach it.
5. Establish a timeline with milestones
Once you’ve processed all the information, it’s time to set the roadmap. Break the project into smaller pieces. For example, let’s say your goal is to increase your monthly Google visits by 50% in six months. Your milestones might look like this
- Boost your existing pages – Month 2
- Write 30 new blog articles – Month 4
- Get 20 authoritative backlinks – Month 6
Put those milestones in a gantt chart, and you will end up with this:
The goal here is to paint the bigger picture. You need to identify the smaller goals that will eventually lead you to the larger one. It’s like breaking the project into smaller projects.
6. Assign tasks with due dates
Once you have broken the project into milestones, it’s time to break the milestones into tasks. The process is pretty much the same. Take each milestone and write down the step you need to take to accomplish it.
Following our previous example, it might look like this:
- Boost your existing pages – Month 2
- Assess the SEO health of the site – Week 2
- Fix your in-page issues – Week 4
- Promote the updates in social media/newsletter – Week 8
- Write 30 new blog articles – Month 4
- Get 30 new keywords you could rank for – Week 10
- Write 30 new articles – Week 16
- Promote the articles in social media/newsletter – Week 16
- Get 20 authoritative backlinks – Month 6
- Write 5 high quality guides as link magnets – Week 22
- Promote the guides in social media /newsletter – Week 24
- Outreach 500 people for backlinks – Week 24
Put those tasks in a gantt chart, and you will end up with this:
[This is an example of how to break a project into smaller tasks. Do not follow these steps blindly]
This process establishes a baseline for both waterfall and agile projects. For waterfall, you can easily turn this into a Gantt chart. For an agile project, these tasks will form your initial backlog.
7. Check in with your team and reassess
Assign each milestone and task to a single person on your team. This will hold them accountable for the results.
You should also set up regular meetings. For agile projects, it’s important to have reviews at the beginning and end of each sprint. Daily stand-ups are also a plus for quickly resolving roadblocks. Do not be afraid to make changes to your original plan. This is the point of agile!
Even though waterfall projects are not as dynamic, you should still have regular meetings. Scope creep and missed deadlines are common. Many things can suddenly ruin your plans. This is why risk management is so important.
What to do next?
Now it’s time to put this knowledge into action. Start by evaluating your current projects and identify areas where you can implement the strategies discussed.
Set clear goals, create a well-defined project plan, and communicate effectively with your team. Don’t hesitate to leverage project management tools and software to streamline your processes. Remember, successful project management is about achieving results efficiently.
If you are looking to start your own business, check out this guide.