Build a Website – Intro.

Sometime back I was tasked with being the project lead in creating four websites for the Church I attend and in an attempt to help others understand I documented the process. The aim is for a series of posts outlining my experiences and what steps I took to get our Church’s eCommerce site up and running. however, let me clarify some things from the start though ….

• This will not be from a coders viewpoint but that of a tech head that knows the terminology
• I know this won’t be all encompassing but I trust it proves informative
• I am not a trained project manager so your mileage may vary
• I have to use outside resources

With that said, let’s dive straight in with the first part:As I said above, I’m not a project manager but I am an organised and logical person and have had plenty of experience in organising many different projects, events, plays, etc. For me the hardest part of any project is where to start but typically I start with a brain storming (some call it mind mapping) session and for this I use pen and paper and FreeMind. FreeMind is so much more flexible than pen and paper but I still prefer the tactileness (Ed: is that a word?) of the old school approach.

When running a project there are always several steps and I’m sure there are as many variations of this as there are people running projects, but my approach could be defined as this – although I admit that this mostly just happens without my thinking about the steps:

• Define and agree the objective of the project
• Brainstorm ideas
• Assess / analyse ideas
• Categorise, refine and combine ideas
• Agree way forward
• Assign, analyse, prioritise & monitor tasks
• Agree timescales
• Feedback at agreed intervals
• Above all, keep God central in the plans

So that’s my nine step approach. Some will slot easily into other areas and I can already think of more that could be added – however I firmly believe that project managing should be about facilitating and not getting mired in the process.

In future posts I intend to cover the above steps in more detail – at present I don’t know how many pots this will take up but I foresee at least three or four…

• site design and content creation
• hosting
• dealing with leadership / employing third parties
• wrap up

If there is anything I don’t cover then please give me a shout and I’ll either include it or try to find a solution.