How To Start A Website Project In Less Than 2 Hours

When it comes to new web projects, everyone is aware of the importance of a proper time and task management. Due to various reasons, the setup of many of these projects isn’t that well prepared and some projects fail. We at Usersnap prepared 5 tips for getting started with your next web project(s) and bringing your project management skills for digital projects on the next level.

There already are a lot of tools and software available, which helps you manage your time & plan and execute web projects. To be honest, there’s no overall solution in managing your time and web project in the right way. Nevertheless, you can upgrade your next web project with these 5 tips:

1. Get Started with the Pomodoro Technique

At the very beginning of a new project you’ll probably deal with all different aspects – from setting up the right team with the right responsibilities, to getting a first draft of your project plan.

The amount of tasks you’ll have to deal with will look huge for you. Some of  these tasks will be managed quite smoothly. Other tasks won’t be that exciting. Checking your social media updates regularly is a great temptation when it comes to dealing with your non-exciting tasks.

We recommend making yourself comfortable with the Pomodoro technique in order to address your assigned tasks. The Pomodoro technique was developed in the 80s by Francesco Cirillo and it allows you to break down your work into intervals, separated by short breaks. Although emails, websites, not to mention social media weren’t wide-spread in the late 80s, the Pomodoro technique will help you to resist the temptation of facebook, twitter & Co.

Each interval normally last for 25 minutes, separated by a 5 minute break. The concept aims to bring your productivity on the next level through breaking your tasks into smaller parts and taking short breaks to keep your mind fresh.

Further on, the clear breakdown of 25 minutes taks will help you to prioritize, manage and execute your tasks more efficiently.

Tools for Getting Started with Pomodoro

There are different awesome tasks tools (such as Wunderlist or Asana) out there. Get started by breaking your personal project tasks into 25 minute tasks – Wunderlist or Asana will help you to manage them more efficiently.

• Asana
• Evernote
• Wunderlist

Working on your 25 minutes tasks, we’ll recommend using one of the following tools to keep focused:

• Pomodoro timer: http://tomatoi.st/oeeb
• Tomato timer: http://tomato-timer.com/
• Moosti: http://www.moosti.com/
• Break Time App: http://breaktimeapp.com/

For further information about the Pomodoro technique please have a look at Dhaval Panchal’s article of the Definition of Done concept.

2. Make Yourself Familiar with Requirements Engineering & Get a Project Management Tool

Getting started with website/app projects isn’t that easy at the very beginning. You’ve probably already heard and read about different methods and frameworks – like Scrum or Kanban. All sound kind of similar in theory and you’ll wonder where the difference is. Let us just forget about all these concepts and let’s focus on a much more practical framework – the concept of requirements engineering.

Requirements engineering simply refers to the process of formulating, documenting and maintaining different requirements (for web projects). This means that we are trying to manage a project (and all different aspects of it) just by identifying all relevant “requirements” at the beginning of the project.

Further on, the concept of requirements engineering takes an important role throughout the whole project. It sounds like it’s not worth mentioning, right?

But let’s be honest: at the early stage of a project it’s really hard to collect all different demands from different stakeholders of the project. And here’s a short step-by-step manual how to focus on the “true” requirements:

1. Identify your stakeholders (internal and external ones – and don’t forget about the “end-user”)
2. Discover their needs and demands
3. Evaluate and prioritize their requirements (along mandatory- and nice-to-have features)
4. iterate over and over again

Identifying, formulating, documenting and monitoring all your requirements can become quite a mess if you’re not using the right tool.

Besides well-known project software for web development – like JIRA – there are more and more really awesome tools available on the market. Collecting your requirements/tasks, to planning your milestones, to analysing your project progress. Have a look at one of these awesome project management tools and try it yourself to see if it fits to your project.

3. Set Up Communication Guidelines

Working together in smaller teams where people know each other very well is basically easy and you won’t think about any formal rules or guidelines. It becomes more and more complex as soon as the project team gets bigger, or start working in remote teams, or you have to deal with non-familiar requirements.

As a result, we recommend installing a communication plan for your project which determines certain communication guidelines, such as…

…how and when can I get in touch with a certain team member.

…who needs what information.

…which regularly meetings are fixed.

…who is in charge for which area of the project.

There are different concepts available for establishing a communication plan. This is also something which has to be communicated clearly at the beginning of a new project. Project management tools nowadays offer chat tools as well. Further on, there are great chat messengers for business communication available, which can be integrated with your project tool. Using email for your internal project communication can be fine too, however these mentioned guidelines have to be considered, as well.

4. Testing, Testing, Testing

Some projects fail because of different soft facts (such as communication). Others fail because of the lack of an accurate testing or quality assurance phase.

Whether there are smaller errors, or more critical ones, with the great number of different browsers, it is our responsibility – as web developers, designers and project managers – to ensure that our website or application is performing adequately.

Because of that, room must be left for keeping track of all different issues and bugs. Bug reporting is one of the most important steps in each web project. Having a clear view on the requirements (for example with the mentioned concept of requirements engineering), website testers and support agents can easily undertake different testing szenarios.

Having an easy-to-use bug tracking tool is essential. No matter if there’s an entire testing team in your project or some people take over the role as a tester and QA agent. Conducting cross browser tests as well as different website checks will reveal all different issues and bugs.

Bug Reporting and Issue Tracking tools for Your Web Project

Here you can find a list of both free and premium tools for a proper website testing. These tools will help you to keep track of your bugs which allows you to solve them faster.

• Responsinator: Test your website and see how it looks in different browsers and devices: http://www.responsinator.com/
• Usersnap: The perfect tool for keeping track of all your bugs: https://usersnap.com
• Crossbrowsertesting: http://crossbrowsertesting.com/
• uTest: Let real people test your website/application http://www.utest.com
  

5. Get Deeper into Your Web Project

We’ve already shown you a bunch of tools we recommend for your next web project. To get even more out of your next web project, we’d like to suggest integrating your tools deeper in your web project workflow.
For example, many project management tools offer 3rd party integrations for different chat tools. By integrating your chat messenger with your project management tool you can improve your team communication and make collaboration more interactive. But not only chat messengers can be connected to your project management tool. Browser testing and bug tracking tools can easily be integrated with our project management software as well.

Having all information in one place will not only make you and your co-workers more productive, but also allows you to keep your web project on track.

Final thoughts

Getting started with a new project isn’t that easy, especially if it’s dealing in a new metier. By making use of different concepts such as the Pomodoro technique or requirements engineering the project start will become more pleasant. Setting up communication guidelines and establishing a project management tool for your web projects makes you and your co-workers more productive and let’s you focus on the important project tasks which needs to be done.

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