I particularly like this one: a week has passed, whilst the project manager has been “working” with the designer on the definition of 3D behaviour of playing cards on the site. His output landed in my in box yesterday afternoon: it was a list of cards, and the places they would sit in on the site.
This information was available in the original pitch document! So has it really taken a week to change the document format?
It’s Monday, so I’m back with fresh energy. Soon sapped by the realisation that if we ballpark 2 months for development (excluding testing/bugfixing), we need to start at the beginning of June. Which means the designs have to be finalised and signed-off within 3 weeks, and we haven’t even agreed all the content for the site yet.
Here’s a twist I haven’t come across before – the site is companion to a quarterly members’ magazine, so the design has to cover both versions. As a result, the print designers of the magazine get to take the lead on the look’n'feel and design, and once they’re happy hand it off to the digital designer. All within 3 weeks obviously.
None of the designers have worked with me before, so this’ll be double fun.
Oh, and there’s a “secret” area of the site for magazine subscribers. So secret, apparently, that we aren’t yet privy to what will go in it.
I’ve spent today going through all the documents with a fine toothcomb, to extract a list of business, technical, and design requirements. I’ve come away with a long list of questions (most of which can’t be answered yet, I suspect).
Tomorrow is the day for digging out the answers.
The plan is to note all the little steps and stumbles that a new project takes on its way to failure.
Day 1: I’ve just had a meeting to talk through the pitch designs, proposed functionality, and sitemap for a new project, which has to be delivered by the end of July. The sitemap is out of date, including sections that apparently won’t exist in the finished project; functionality is uncertain, and designs are incomplete. We have another meeting later this afternoon to meet the Group Account Director, to bombard him with questions.
Day 1(a): We heard that the project, which had been costed at £94K, had actually been sold at £54K, and that we offered hosting at a monthly cost of £250, which by our estimates will require load balanced SQL Servers (which we recently costed at £2 – 3K pm).
No, there’s nothing that can be descoped or delivered later; it’s all Flash; and the designs haven’t been completed yet alone signed off.
Oh, but the deadline has apparently moved to the end of August 
management, process | jamesk, May 16, 2008 9:25 am | 
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