Day 14: Well, I’ll tell you want it isn’t. It’s not website design or website development. It’s not search engine optimization (SEO) or great writing. It’s not stunning photography, videos or properly crafted calls-to-action. It isn’t even great project management. The secret ingredient to a successful website redesign project is a great Website Project Manager.
Yes ladies and gentlemen, the difference between project management and website project management might as well be the difference between an avocado and a mango, and I say that because we’ve developed websites for both. I’ve seen it time and again, with the same result, time and again. Website project management is not the same as placing an ad agency account executive in charge of a website redesign project. That rarely works. The same holds true for a designer or developer managing the project, or even worse, an ad agency principal.
A great website project manager has hundreds of web-based projects under their belt. I’ve seen our team manage more than a dozen sites at once and it’s ballet-like. I’ve seen our team manage a project with 5,000 stakeholders and it’s synchronized swimming-like.
A great website project manager knows the right questions to ask because they know where and when the train can derail. They keep things on track, on budget, on time. In other words, they keep their scope on scope creep, and the client thanks them for that. They keep designers and developers talking. They understand the iterative process of a website design project – content, design, development, more content, more design, more development – repeat. And they have a strong working knowledge of every aspect of the Discover, Define, Design, Develop, Deploy and my personal sixth D, Derive process. And that’s short for Derive Results, Derive Analytics Conclusions and Derive Client Satisfaction.
Most of all, a great website project manager knows how to manage the expectations. There aren’t many of them out there, but when you find a talented website project manager, you’re Destined for the seventh D – Destined For Success.