07/21/2008

New Bamboo, the Web Development Specialist, warns against limiting web changes during development. By taking a rigid and inflexible approach to web projects, businesses inadvertently risk delivering online products or services that do not fully meet stakeholder requirements.

ebizQ received the following:

In an independent survey of 100 senior IT managers and directors, 59% of respondents believed that by minimising the number of changes during web development they could avoid web project failures and reduce costs. Furthermore, 45% of respondents felt that a greater focus on scoping requirements at the start would help the process.

"Changes are an inevitable part of the web development process. Those managing web projects are often under the impression that by limiting changes you can save money and time. This is a false economy as the resulting software is often a poor fit for what is actually required. People also fail to think about the real cost of a badly produced web product. This could potentially result in reduced sales or poor customer service," argues Damien Tanner, Co-Founder and Director of New Bamboo.

Top five myths of web development include:

1. By limiting web changes you will save money

2. By involving more stakeholders you slow down the development time

3. More flexibility means less control

4. A detailed specification up front will limit project failure

5. Web projects are always late and over budget

New Bamboo recommends that IT professionals actively involve key business stakeholders in any web project. By adopting a dynamic and iterative approach with practices from the Agile philosophy, the project is constantly kept on course for success and avoids unnecessary and costly revisions at later stages. This kind of process also encourages new ideas and this in turn helps deliver better results.

"Too much emphasis and time is allocated to drafting a detailed specification document. Sometimes the process can involve several months work and pages of specification equivalent to a phone directory. It comes as no surprise that after investing this time on producing the brief, that people feel obliged to deliver against it. Having an Agile philosophy, combined with an innovative framework such as Ruby on Rails, can provide a practical solution to address the concerns of IT managers delivering web projects, without the need of compromise," adds Tanner.

The research, conducted by independent market researchers Vanson Bourne on behalf of New Bamboo, surveyed 100 IT professionals from large organisations in several industries, including Financial Services, Manufacturing, Retail, Distribution and Transport. New Bamboo has several industry-leading clients in market segments that include business consultancy, global publishing and international not-for-profit organisations.