Website Design and Development Cycle

This is website design and development cycle of g2blue for my personal review.

Website Design Preparation

Appointment of a dedicated Account Manager

We at G2Blue always appoint a dedicated Account Manager. You will have a guaranteed point of contact to enable the efficient and smooth running of any website design or development project we carry out for you.

Understanding of the client's business needs and aspirations through research and one to one meetings

Before we even meet with you we will make every effort to gain an understanding of your business as a whole. What you provide, who you provide it for and how you provide it.

When we meet with you we take time to establish where you would like your business to be, when you want it to be there and what you believe is currently stopping you being there.

Analysis of your existing advertising and branding media resources

We need to bring together your business cards, sign writing, letterheads, newspaper advertising, exhibition stands and product packaging. All these things need to be taken into account when considering your website design and development.

Analysis of your immediate competition

With your help we will establish who competes along side you for business and ensure that we know and understand what your competitors are doing with their websites. This information will allow us to make sure that we provide you with a superior product.

Website Design Conception

Scrapbook design through meetings and examples

Website experiences and design examples are used to complete a rough picture of what you want the website design to look like, and what sort of user experience you expect. We will often ask you for examples of other websites you like the look of and enjoy using.

Multiple website design ideas, discussion and design decision

We will then take all the initial ideas together with your current branding and marketing material to formulate a group of ideas that articulate your company's objectives.

Anchor points discussed and created

We at G2Blue make a point of identifying key anchor points within your website. These areas form critical points of reference for the whole design process and are considered the premier traffic pages.

Refining these ideas will identify the strengths and weaknesses of your website and online strategy. Discussions will run parallel to our analysis of your online business policy, realising your target audience and their requirements.

Information architecture methodology

G2Blue applies 'Information Architecture' (IA) methods to your website design. This is the process of organising and presenting information to help the user find and manage information more successfully.

Please see our Information Architecture datasheet for more details.

The understanding of your information sets the foundations for a good user experience. We will use this to ensure that every user to your site can achieve their goals quickly and simply.

Search engine optimisation

We will optimise and build your website right from the conception phase with high search engine rankings in mind. As we are specialists in search engine optimisation, we will build your site so that it has the best possible chance of a strong presence on the major search engines and directories. Effective search engine optimisation strategies adopted at this early stage in website design and development can significantly result in lower search engine optimisation charges later on.

Specification, site maps and project plan

A written specification is drawn up detailing every page within the website. This helps us to determine the way users are guided and navigated throughout the site, and allows you to clearly see how each aspect of the website is connected to another. Once the specification has been agreed upon, sitemaps are drawn up showing paths through the site that the user might take.

These are comprehensive visual representations of the different features of your site. Quite often alterations are made to the specifications once you have a more visual image through viewing the site map.

Once the written specification and sitemaps have been finalised we can accurately judge the production timescales required to make the site.

G2Blue will produce a project plan that details each task and the time required for building & testing.

There will be milestones within the time line identifying important project dates to act as our progress guide throughout the lifecycle of the project.

Actual production time on the site will begin when all three of these documents have been mutually agreed upon and signed off.

Mutual responsibility, timescales and contract agreed

Contracts will be agreed and signed, they will identify each parties responsibilities from conception to the time when the website appears live on the World Wide Web.

Website Creation

Design update meetings and milestone signoff

Throughout the whole project we will hold regular update meetings. These will comprise of frank and honest discussions concerning the progress of your website design. It is our experience that website development time is significantly reduced by holding update meetings and we recommend that you allocate to us a Project Manager within your company who has responsibility over key decisions to avoid project slip.

Progression viewable online

Website Testing

Technology integration testing

Unlike other website development companies, we will make every effort to make sure that the website we create for you works in any Internet browser available.

This may increase the length of design time required but will ensure that the website has completely seamless online presence.

User interface testing

A comprehensive testing period is always allowed within a website project. We test your website page by page and also allow for at least a week for you to test the site independently.

Website Implementation & Launch

Website live

At a mutually convenient time we will upload your website to the agreed location. Please note that our in-house web servers provide a secure and fast hosting solution for your website.

Training

When we develop a website that requires interaction by your staff we will ensure that all employees concerned are trained properly. There needs to be total understanding and a way for all users to feel confident with the new website. In addition, we know from previous experience that a website needs to be continuously promoted by your employees on a regular basis and as such we recommend a quarterly meeting with your employees accordingly.

Website Review & Support

Review meetings

G2Blue believes that what happens after the delivery of a website is equally as important to all that takes place beforehand. We will agree regular meetings with you to ensure complete satisfaction and understanding of ongoing needs.

Direct query logging with guaranteed response

All of our website designs incorporate a query logging facility that can be used by clients to log queries direct to our designers and developers. We will respond, guaranteed.

All of our account managers have direct telephone numbers that are issued to clients as well as the mandatory email address.

Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

Summary: As in any other engineering discipline, software engineering also has some structured models for software development. This document will provide you with a generic overview about different software development methodologies adopted by contemporary software firms. Read on to know more about the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) in detail.

Curtain Raiser

Like any other set of engineering products, software products are also oriented towards the customer. It is either market driven or it drives the market. Customer Satisfaction was the buzzword of the 80's. Customer Delight is today's buzzword and Customer Ecstasy is the buzzword of the new millennium. Products that are not customer or user friendly have no place in the market although they are engineered using the best technology. The interface of the product is as crucial as the internal technology of the product.

Market Research

A market study is made to identify a potential customer's need. This process is also known as market research. Here, the already existing need and the possible and potential needs that are available in a segment of the society are studied carefully. The market study is done based on a lot of assumptions. Assumptions are the crucial factors in the development or inception of a product's development. Unrealistic assumptions can cause a nosedive in the entire venture. Though assumptions are abstract, there should be a move to develop tangible assumptions to come up with a successful product.

Research and Development

Once the Market Research is carried out, the customer's need is given to the Research & Development division (R&D) to conceptualize a cost-effective system that could potentially solve the customer's needs in a manner that is better than the one adopted by the competitors at present. Once the conceptual system is developed and tested in a hypothetical environment, the development team takes control of it. The development team adopts one of the software development methodologies that is given below, develops the proposed system, and gives it to the customer.

The Sales & Marketing division starts selling the software to the available customers and simultaneously works to develop a niche segment that could potentially buy the software. In addition, the division also passes the feedback from the customers to the developers and the R&D division to make possible value additions to the product.

While developing a software, the company outsources the non-core activities to other companies who specialize in those activities. This accelerates the software development process largely. Some companies work on tie-ups to bring out a highly matured product in a short period.

Popular Software Development Models

The following are some basic popular models that are adopted by many software development firms

A. System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) Model
B. Prototyping Model
C. Rapid Application Development Model
D. Component Assembly Model

A. System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) Model

This is also known as Classic Life Cycle Model (or) Linear Sequential Model (or) Waterfall Method. This model has the following activities.

1. System/Information Engineering and Modeling

As software is always of a large system (or business), work begins by establishing the requirements for all system elements and then allocating some subset of these requirements to software. This system view is essential when the software must interface with other elements such as hardware, people and other resources. System is the basic and very critical requirement for the existence of software in any entity. So if the system is not in place, the system should be engineered and put in place. In some cases, to extract the maximum output, the system should be re-engineered and spruced up. Once the ideal system is engineered or tuned, the development team studies the software requirement for the system.

2. Software Requirement Analysis

This process is also known as feasibility study. In this phase, the development team visits the customer and studies their system. They investigate the need for possible software automation in the given system. By the end of the feasibility study, the team furnishes a document that holds the different specific recommendations for the candidate system. It also includes the personnel assignments, costs, project schedule, target dates etc.... The requirement gathering process is intensified and focussed specially on software. To understand the nature of the program(s) to be built, the system engineer or "Analyst" must understand the information domain for the software, as well as required function, behavior, performance and interfacing. The essential purpose of this phase is to find the need and to define the problem that needs to be solved .

3. System Analysis and Design

In this phase, the software development process, the software's overall structure and its nuances are defined. In terms of the client/server technology, the number of tiers needed for the package architecture, the database design, the data structure design etc... are all defined in this phase. A software development model is thus created. Analysis and Design are very crucial in the whole development cycle. Any glitch in the design phase could be very expensive to solve in the later stage of the software development. Much care is taken during this phase. The logical system of the product is developed in this phase.

4. Code Generation

The design must be translated into a machine-readable form. The code generation step performs this task. If the design is performed in a detailed manner, code generation can be accomplished without much complication. Programming tools like compilers, interpreters, debuggers etc... are used to generate the code. Different high level programming languages like C, C++, Pascal, Java are used for coding. With respect to the type of application, the right programming language is chosen.

5. Testing

Once the code is generated, the software program testing begins. Different testing methodologies are available to unravel the bugs that were committed during the previous phases. Different testing tools and methodologies are already available. Some companies build their own testing tools that are tailor made for their own development operations.

6. Maintenance

The software will definitely undergo change once it is delivered to the customer. There can be many reasons for this change to occur. Change could happen because of some unexpected input values into the system. In addition, the changes in the system could directly affect the software operations. The software should be developed to accommodate changes that could happen during the post implementation period.

B. Prototyping Model

This is a cyclic version of the linear model. In this model, once the requirement analysis is done and the design for a prototype is made, the development process gets started. Once the prototype is created, it is given to the customer for evaluation. The customer tests the package and gives his/her feed back to the developer who refines the product according to the customer's exact expectation. After a finite number of iterations, the final software package is given to the customer. In this methodology, the software is evolved as a result of periodic shuttling of information between the customer and developer. This is the most popular development model in the contemporary IT industry. Most of the successful software products have been developed using this model - as it is very difficult (even for a whiz kid!) to comprehend all the requirements of a customer in one shot. There are many variations of this model skewed with respect to the project management styles of the companies. New versions of a software product evolve as a result of prototyping.

C. Rapid Application Development (RAD) Model

The RAD modelis a linear sequential software development process that emphasizes an extremely short development cycle. The RAD model is a "high speed" adaptation of the linear sequential model in which rapid development is achieved by using a component-based construction approach. Used primarily for information systems applications, the RAD approach encompasses the following phases:

1. Business modeling

The information flow among business functions is modeled in a way that answers the following questions:

What information drives the business process?
What information is generated?
Who generates it?
Where does the information go?
Who processes it?

2. Data modeling

The information flow defined as part of the business modeling phase is refined into a set of data objects that are needed to support the business. The characteristic (called attributes) of each object is identified and the relationships between these objects are defined.

3. Process modeling

The data objects defined in the data-modeling phase are transformed to achieve the information flow necessary to implement a business function. Processing the descriptions are created for adding, modifying, deleting, or retrieving a data object.

4. Application generation

The RAD model assumes the use of the RAD tools like VB, VC++, Delphi etc... rather than creating software using conventional third generation programming languages. The RAD model works to reuse existing program components (when possible) or create reusable components (when necessary). In all cases, automated tools are used to facilitate construction of the software.

5. Testing and turnover

Since the RAD process emphasizes reuse, many of the program components have already been tested. This minimizes the testing and development time.

D. Component Assembly Model

Object technologies provide the technical framework for a component-based process model for software engineering. The object oriented paradigm emphasizes the creation of classes that encapsulate both data and the algorithm that are used to manipulate the data. If properly designed and implemented, object oriented classes are reusable across different applicationsand computer based system architectures. Component Assembly Model leads to software reusability. The integration/assembly of the already existing software components accelerate the development process. Nowadays many component libraries are available on the Internet. If the right components are chosen, the integration aspect is made much simpler.

Conclusion

All these different software development models have their own advantages and disadvantages. Nevertheless, in the contemporary commercial software evelopment world, the fusion of all these methodologies is incorporated. Timing is very crucial in software development. If a delay happens in the development phase, the market could be taken over by the competitor. Also if a 'bug' filled product is launched in a short period of time (quicker than the competitors), it may affect the reputation of the company. So, there should be a tradeoff between the development time and the quality of the product. Customers don't expect a bug free product but they expect a user-friendly product. That results in Customer Ecstasy!

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