I’m back and it’s time to blog again. Today we are going to kick things off by talking about Project Management; What is it, methodologies involved and breaking down the life cycle. In this, part 1, we will be dissecting the first two phases: Project Initiation and Project Planning. Hang around for part 2, which will finalise the phases with Project execution and control, and Project closure.

So without further ado, let’s kick things off.

What is Project Management?

Put simply, project management is the discipline of planning, leading, monitoring and organizing a team and resources in order to effectively bring about the successful completion of a project based on predefined budget, time, quality, scope and resources allocated.

What is the project management life cycle?

That’s a question I get asked quite a lot when consulting with firms on project management and procedural process management alike. In theory, the project management life cycle is dependant on the industry, the methodology used by the manager and other factors – however, there are generally four stages of the project management life cycle. These include Project Initiation, Project Planning, Project execution and control, and Project closure. Let’s take a look at the first two:

1. Project Initiation

In kicking off a project,  the scope of the project is considered very important. Depending on the scenario and the work environment, a project manager is usually chosen with a number of pre-selected team members whose skills the company believes will meet the objectives required to be completed for the project to be successful. However, there are times when the project manager also has the oppurtunity to select his/her team, or just has to settle with who ever is free to be resourced at that time; (generally what happens in the Sydney Web Design and general web design industry).

It is at this stage of the game that the tools required or methodologies which are to be followed (for example PRINCE 2) are selected.

Some documents you should expect as a project manager to complete or work on include:

• Project Charter/Definition
  • This will be a document containing a statement of the scope (the total work needed to complete a project), the projects’ objectives and a listing of team members involved in the project.
• Business Plan
  • A plan of the business goals and how they are going to be acheived – whether short term or long term. I.e. drop legacy systems, etc.

2. Project Planning

The second phase of project management, the planning phase is one of the most important phases. Planning a project correctly can truly mean the difference between failure and success!

Project management planning IDE’s and applications such as Microsoft Project will help you to lay out your project in WBS format. WBS stands for Work Breakdown Structure; an important, principal project management tool which help you to structure a project in a way to define groups of work to be done.

For example, generally speaking a project working off the general SDLC (Software development life cycle) would probably be laid out in the following tree-line structure:

1. Planning
2. Analysis & Information Architecture
3. Design
4. Implementation/development
5. Support/Quality Assurance/Launch

What WBS allows you to control is everything from the subordinate costs for each task as well as materials needed and resources to allocate the work to. In essence, what you see above will obviously then be broken down into smaller, objective-based tasks; hence the ‘breakdown’.

if you are interesed in getting more acquainted the Work Breakdown Structure, head over to another article discussing the Critical Path Method of Project Management.

So there you go guys! Keep clicking around for part 2 which will talk more about project planning and the last two phases of the project management life cycle – as well as more exciting blogging coming up soon!

Don’t forget to Subscribe to our RSS feed for more content as soon as it gets posted!

Thanks for reading, C2.0

One of the most-visited posts at Cheb 2.0 Web Design blog was the post on ‘An Introduction to Web 2.0′. In fact, it was so popular that I received a dozen emails through my social profiles to write more about the topic of Rich Internet Applications and other Web 2.0 technologies in general. Having at this time just spoken to a friend of mine, Rhys Tague, who had just started his own online endeavours, he seemed to also be very interested in the whole process of Rich Internet Applications (RIA) and what they mean in todays’ web world. After a little chat we came up with the idea of him sharing his views on RIA with Cheb 2.0! It would give us his insight into the world of RIA’s – and if that involved a couple of hits his way, then bonus! So let’s see what Rhys has found out about RIA’s through his travels on the web.

Hey Mr. RIA, why the big smile?

Rich Internet Applications are no longer just a craze! They are here to stay.

Ajax, Adobe Flex, OpenLaszlo and Microsoft Silverlight are the major contenders in the arena. Even though I have developed in Ajax, Flex and had a crack at OpenLaszlo as well as Silverlight; I found Flex to be the best! But of course it is personal choice and each one has advantages and disadvantages over each other.

For example, create an advanced web form with Ajax used to provide feedback doesn’t mean that you have developed a rich Internet application. A RIA means that a website or an entire part of the website acts like a traditional desktop application. Facebook, Google Maps, Google Analytics and others in the same class have features of rich Internet application; but do not fulfill the definition of a RIA.

For an Internet application to be a fully fledged RIA, the page should never reload to present information – It should run like an application on your desktop. Instead of reloading pages, it should change states and load information into the user interface components. All of the RIA development technologies I’ve mentioned can perform this functionality. Some examples of full rich Internet applications include Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail, Adobe Buzzword (this one is that good that I typed this article in it!), and Yahoo! Mail. There are a lot more, and these are just the famous ones that I use all the time that you might of heard of.

The time where pages looked pretty and did nothing else is over! Users want to be entertained and be engaged in the content that they receive. Would you come back to a site after you saw the content and you knew that you couldn’t get anything else out of it? Of course not! But say you were overseas and were taking pictures like crazy – and you wanted to send pictures home to show your family members. To your shock and horror, some of the pictures though didn’t look that well. Now if you had a site that allowed you to upload your images online anywhere in the world and edit colour, sharpness, hue, add styles and crop your images; it would solve your dilemma, No?

And after your trip you would most probably still use the site as you found it so helpful! Now you’re most probably saying,”Okay, that is great but how does that relate to a company website?” Well think of a business process or processes that could be automated by the end user. I can think of several.

For example, if your company sold whitegoods and they all came with a 12 month warranty; instead of getting the customer to fill out a warranty card, you could send them online to your warranty centre – where they could lodge their warranty, place a service request, place a warranty request, monitor requests and find support documentation all in one Rich Internet Application. Now of course your company website still needs a section to explain the products and services that your company offers and a section to contact them, but I guess what I am trying to say is that websites now have more potential to be more then just a brochure about your company; It can be a digital extension of your company accessible to the world!

Out of the four technologies that I mentioned, three use plugins to run the RIA capabilities. Ajax is the only one that doesn’t need a plugin to run. This is because Ajax is based off existing technologies that exist in all modern Internet browsers; namely, Javascript and XHTML. It’s not re-inventing the wheel it is just a new way of development by using the Javascript client side script to talk to a server side script (PHP, ASP .Net, etc.), and then presenting it to the user by manipulating XHTML markup. The three technologies that need a plugin to run are Flex, Silverlight and OpenLaszlo. These plugins are installed by the end-user when they want to view the RIA or content that needs the plug-in. Some people would see this as a downfall, but I see it as a bonus because if you’re building applications for commercial distribution your code is not easily accessible. To develop with these technologies you use a XML-based markup language for presentation/design and an object-oriented programming language for coding. Another benefit is they don’t take long to pick up to learn as all you need to know is basic web-development skills!

These technologies that are available for RIA development are still in their ‘teens’ and still have a lot of growing up to do! Over the next couple of years we are going to see greater improvements in the technologies that build RIAs; including lighter frameworks, diverse interface components, easier development, easier deployment and cross-platform capability, which is already happening. Adobe released a runtime called AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) which is versatile and allows you to use Flex and Ajax to develop RIAs for the desktop; which is great as you can bring your website to a user’s desktop without massive alterations to your code!

Hopefully what this means is that it is going to cause web-developers to be more creative so they can get a user to use their application. You’re going to have to be first in, best dressed otherwise it will be extremely hard for you to turn a user over to your RIA. I quite like this idea actually as it means that we will hopefully start to see a lot more interesting and ground breaking RIAs! I guess we will just have to wait and see how it all pans out for Rich Internet Application development in the coming year.

Coined (in what seems to be) all those years ago now, in 2005, the phrase ‘Web 2.0′ or ‘Web 2′ for short, is used to define a shift in progression in the web. More importantly, a ’second-generation’ of Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web leaning towards the way in which websites are designed and developed. Sure, that sounds easy enough to digest – right? The result of the juxtaposition of ‘Web generations’ occurs when we realize that the whole Web 2 idea is a lot more than ‘The web on steroids’ or ‘The Web’s very tech-savvy son’.

In theory, the power of Web 2.0 lies in the fact that a true Web 2.0-built website should, by all means, allow users to do more than just retrieve information. Gone are the days when clicking on a link and reading a blog post was considered highly-enthralling (don’t get me wrong – I love blogging!). These days, with the shift in thought surrounding website design from basic ’static websites’ to ‘Web 2.0 portals’, we are expecting a lot more.Not only should the site offer you information – hell, we have Web 2 now! It should interact with you; the avid viewer, and more importantly change how you think websites should work. ‘Make the font bigger or smaller’, ‘move sections of the site you commonly use above the fold of the page’ (and have it remember your settings when you come back next time!), ‘access information on the fly without reloading the page’ – all appropriate and able to be done through Web 2 and it’s related technologies.

So we have jumped onto a greater topic of interest now in ‘Web 2.0 technologies’. I mean what is a web buzzword if it isn’t attached to countless other buzzwords anyway? Web 2.0 would really just be a buzzword if it weren’t for all its underlying technologies, discussed below.

The list begins with our good friend Ajax; a mix of JavaScript and XML, which allows web developers to asynchronously talk (exchange information) with databases (website backend’s) without making the user leave or reload the page. Imagine this, in a galaxy not too far away, you are browsing through a website loaded with information. You click on a side-link to a sub-page, and bang! Nothing has changed! The website still looks exactly the same; the header, footer, side-navigation and website address (if the developer intended so) are all still as you had left them – but one thing has changed; the content you requested has been pulled out from the database through XML and JavaScript and is now displayed right before your eyes where the previous content was. Cool! (or is it Uber?).

Adding to the list we started is Rich Internet Applications, affectionately known as R-I-A’s in the web industry (and by no means not the Recording Industry Association of America!). Rich Internet Applications, are collectively classed as web applications that have the features and functionality of traditional desktop applications. RIA’s can be made using a mix of current web technologies like Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, Adobe AIR, and/or Microsoft’s brainchild, Silverlight – a subset of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).

Simple and sweet, right? In essence, a RI application would present the user with the ability to perform those functions which said user is accustom to due to having those features present on a desktop personal computer or a laptop.

Some functions Rich Internet Applications share with many desktop applications may include:

1. Drag and drop
2. Alerts (live or delayed)
3. Window resizing
4. Minimizing of windows/pop-ups
5. No page refreshing

By doing many of the above, Rich Internet Applications help the user to feel as though they are working in a desktop-like environment; thus making it intuitive or easy to use. Many of the modules/options you could expect to find in such applications ‘mimic’ or use same functionality as other prominent software such as the Microsoft Office suite or Microsoft Outlook which take a user-centered approach to their design philosophy.

So there you have it, a dirty-quick yet fulfilling, informative introduction to what Web 2.0 is. Stay tuned for more articles, including a guide to Web 2.0 website design as well as an early look at Web 3! Yes, you read that right! Subscribe to the RSS feed for more.

I know it’s a little bit belated now, but Happy New Year to you all!

Not only does the term ‘knol’ just not ring as many bells as ‘wiki’ or ‘wikipedia’ does, but is what Google trying to achieve simply just seven years too late?

Google may have changed the way we search for information online, but Wikipedia can stand tall and proud of having changed the way millions of people search for knowledge online. Ironically, from its own Wikipedia article; “Launched in 2001, Wikipedia is the largest and dominant general reference work currently available on the Internet.”

The difference that Google is promoting (obviously between them and Wikipedia) is that their goal is to “encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it.” Wow, sure seems like they are deviating from the norm these days, doesn’t it? You would have thought that was exactly what Wikipedia was about. The main difference however stems from the fact that Wikipedia’s visitors do not need to be qualified to contribute, since their primary role is to write articles that cover existing knowledge.

The somewhat cool thing that Google wants to promote is the author of the article themselves. As seen in the screenshot, (further below), the writer of the article will be a key part of the Knol web page design. Google believes that author’s don’t get much ‘praise’ online, as they do offline.

One thing however that I find very intriguing is that Google Knol is really starting to sound like a an experiment in the cloning of About.com with Wikipedia! Seriously, think about it!

About has authors or “expert guides” who have to ‘prove’ they really know about the topic they want to write about; whilst Google on the other hand want to “encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it”. I think we’re onto something here!

Google says that ‘anyone’ can write, but believes that there are likely to be competing knols on the same subject. This is where we jump off into Web 2.0 land – because people can submit comments, ask questions, add additional content and even edit the information – another online community!
The funny thing is on the official Google blog, they conclude the post on Google Knol by stating, quote: “We do not want to build a walled garden of content; we want to disseminate it as widely as possible. Google will not ask for any exclusivity on any of this content and will make that content available to any other search engine.” Well of course you won’t build a walled garden of content, Google – sure, the Internet world will always look out for anything that comes out of Mountain View, CA; but do you really think you can take on Wikipedia with its 2,125,453+ articles consisting of over 921,000,000 words? (stats from Wikipedia article)

I mean rating articles, commenting on articles and even asking questions would be ‘hell-a-cool’, but if I’m doing an assignment on World War II, am I really interested in writing a review about the article, or just finding out what I need and getting out of there?

Knowledge is power and content is king, but not everything needs a Web 2.0 slant on it. Don’t get me wrong – as soon as it’s publicly available not only will I be using it, but I’ll probably be blogging about it, but I’d never consider stop using Wikipedia; that’s just a given.

Finally, since this is somewhat of a web design blog, I have to say I like what Google has done with this preliminary design/mock-up for Knol. Google tends to get their user interface; more importantly, the user experience right and this one is certainly carrying on that trend. Soft colours, as well as what appears to be a bit of interactivity (drop down panels for more information, etc) and a fluid, vertical design pane gets the thumbs up from me. I guess we will have to wait and see what Google can make of all of this!

Check out the Knol preliminary web page design >> Show me Knol

So what do you think of Knol? Will it work? Should Wikipedia be worried? Share your thoughts with us. Subscribe to our RSS feed to stay on top of the latest we have to share.

Founded in 2004, the ’social utility’ affectionately known to just about everyone you know as Facebook, run from Palo Alto in the United States was valued at no less than $US15 billion ($AUD 16.36 billion), and whilst only trading for a relatively short-lived four years employs 300 staff. One would think Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft would be over the moon today. His bid to win a stake in other successful Web 2.0 endeavours such as Internet ad service DoubleClick Inc. and YouTube were battles lost to Google Inc. By sealing the deal, Microsoft could finally say they have a stake in Web 2.0; because if the past is anything to go by, previous Web 2.0 endeavours by the Redmond-based company such as Spaces and the Zune Marketplace have experienced fairly insignificant take-off speeds.

Its not rocket science to see that Microsoft has a lot to win with the Facebook deal. According to Wikipedia, during its fiscal year ending in June, Microsoft’s online ad revenue rose just 21 percent to $1.84 billion compared to Google’s ad revenue soaring 64 percent to $13.3 billion – Clearly meaning owning a stake in Facebook is a big deal for ‘William’ and his mates.

If nothing else, at least finally the big fish have realised the importance that Web 2.0 plays in today’s information-packed world. Will this lead to Google giving up on their own social network – Orkut? I guess it’ll all be revealed sooner rather than later.

How much do you think this will change what we know and love about Facebook?Was it worthwhile for Facebook as much as it obviously was for Microsoft? Let us know your views.