Description
The digital world is growing and changing at a rate that can seem overwhelming to those project managers who have to keep up with it to build customer-facing solutions and applications. It’s rare for project managers working in this field to be provided with much direction or a process by which to carry out a project, and there has been almost nothing available specific to these types of projects in the literary marketplace. Digital Project Management: The Complete Step-by-Step Guide to a Successful Launch was developed to fill this gap by providing the knowledge, best practices, and proven steps to successfully manage digital projects from end-to-end and was created to be easily adaptable to different project types and technological advances.
About the author(s)
Taylor Olson is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP®) with more than twenty years of experience in the field. She earned her degree in Telecommunications from Michigan State University, and began her career in automotive marketing and advertising. Ms. Olson has worked for organizations of all sizes and has traveled the world to train and collaborate with global team members, documenting digital project management best practices along the way. Over the past several years, she has been helping to build global websites and applications for Fortune 50 corporations. Taylor currently specializes in using content management systems to produce and maintain global web solutions for large corporations operating in multiple countries and languages.
Taylor’s speaking engagements, presentations, and consulting prior to the development of this book had been by invitation from organizations in a wide variety of industries. One of her more meaningful and recent invitations was to give a presentation on the original healthcare.gov release and how following the process in this book would have prevented most of the problems associated with that rollout.
Taylor is a sought-after speaker and currently travels extensively to share her knowledge and experience at professional associations and events and through webinars and other means to help project managers, and the organizations they serve, achieve successful results.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Basic Training
—Types of Resources
—Types of Agencies
—Responsive Design
—Mobile First
—Getting the Assignment
—The Rollout Process
PART I: INITIATION
Chapter 2: Needs Assessment
—Gap Analysis
—Conduct the Workshop
—The Stakeholder List
Chapter 3: Documentation
—Business Requirements Document (BRD)
—Types of Budget Estimates
—Creating the Budget
—Statement of Work
PART II: PLANNING
Chapter 4: Communication
—Creating the Schedule
—Communication Planning
—Internal Kick-off Meeting
—Status Reports
—Something Extra – Working on Global Teams
Chapter 5: Information Architecture
—Sitemaps
—Technical Solution Strategy
—Wireframes and Functional Specifications
—Style Guides
Chapter 6: Analysis
—Analytics
—Search Engine Optimization
—Something Extra – A/B Testing
—Managing Infrastructures and Environments
—IT Bill of Materials (BOM)
Chapter 7: Development
—Communication
—Change Management
—Something Extra – Data Mapping
Chapter 8: Preparation
—Test Strategy
—Test Cases
—Package Identification
—Construct to Close Schedule
—Something Extra – Working Remotely
PART III: CONSTRUCT TO CLOSE
Chapter 9: Content
—Create Content Tracker
—Asset Quality Review
—Content Entry
—Quality Assurance
—Something Extra – Favicons
Chapter 10: Testing
—Systems Integrated Testing
—User Acceptance Testing
—Non-Functional Testing
—Something Extra – Global Rollouts
Chapter 11: Cutover
—301 Redirects
—Cutover Management
—Transition to Operations
APPENDICES
—Glossary
Reviews
“Using this rollout process for complex technical projects has enabled me to break project work into logical and manageable steps from kick-off to launch. Following along with the process ensures that I don’t miss critical steps that might otherwise be overlooked, and it provides me a guideline for managing complicated work across functional teams. Projects small and large, local or global, and with varying scope can all greatly benefit from the structure provided by the rollout process presented in this book.”
—Jennifer Harrison, Digital Project Manager
“I now use the rollout process in this book for every single site project I manage. It pretty much ensures success thanks to the straightforward, intuitive instructions.”
—Megan Reed, Rollout Manager, MRM//McCann
“Launching nine different sites across South America wouldn’t have been possible without this digital rollout process in place. I strongly recommend it.”
—Rafael Eugenio Figueroa, Digital Marketing, General Motors South America
“This step-by-step process provides an A to Z reference guide to success for any level digital project manager.”
—Anne Marie Lambert, Sr. Digital Producer, Leo Burnett Worldwide, Inc.
“Olson has written a wonderful book targeted to agency project managers charged with delivering digital projects. It offers a great blend of classic project delivery methodology in an agency-specific context. I’m going to buy copies for everyone on my team.”
—Kirk Mager, Platform Lead, The Blue Hive
“I have lready implemented many of these steps into my business, dealing with consulting, web development and application development. I have been very impressed with how helpful it has been for me, and how some clients I have worked with on past projects are enjoying a tighter budget on their finances for their projects when they allow the PM to follow a more detailed research and planning schedule.“—Hamid Timothy Soheili, Pres/CEO, Automata Web Services (As reviewed in PM World Journal, Jan. 2016)
