No one doubts the need to design a house, and anyone understands why it is impossible to build a house by eye, adding features during the construction process. It is helpful to remind you that website development is similar to building a house. It should start with a complete planning of what will have to be developed, in what time frame, with what initial data and the expected result.
There was a period when I was developing websites in a small web studio in Minsk. Layout and programming of landing pages, online stores, CRM and ERP systems. There was no full-fledged stage of website design in the web studio for obvious reasons - additional costs.
Clients addressed their technical specifications, in which everyone described their project as best they could. Such a technical task was enough to understand the project and calculate the costs. As a result, this approach led to a number of problems that poured in like dominoes.
Long approvals
Often the client understands the expected result well, but does not describe the detailed details and clear requirements for the finished version in sufficient detail from the technical development side.
Due to the lack of detail, the programmer often had to clarify the details with the project manager. The project manager translated the programmer's request into Russian and asked the customer. At best, I received an answer and translated it back for the developer; at worst, the approval stages began.
Disruption of work schedule, increase in bugs
New clarifications led to the need to edit the code, refactor individual modules. There were costs for new unit tests and bug fixing.
There were often cases when a manager came to the office at the end of the working day with a pizza in his hands and said “The project is on fire, do not disperse today”. Then, with a small team of developers, we had to stay up late in the office, modify the modules, and fix bugs.
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The full stage of website design is critical for projects where the risks and cost of error increase. For example, marketplaces, news portals, aggregators, CRM and ERP systems. Such projects can be done in a quarter, but without design, they can be done for almost a year or never reach the first release to production.
For those who want to understand the process more, I recommend:
- Information architecture on the Internet. Designing large-scale sites. Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville
- Development of software requirements. Karl Wigers, Joy Beatty
- The architecture of corporate software applications. Martin Fowler.
Easier with an eraser at the drawing board than with a sledgehammer on a construction site. Frank Lloyd Wright