The team should consist of a project manager, two or more developers and at least one functional decision maker. The developers can be technical developers, designers or text writers.

Developers versus the world

These are the people that make the analysis, development and most of the post-deployment phase of the project work. The conceptual phase, however, can be taken care of by marketing people, although the developer team might well be capable of doing this also and definitely needs to be included in the process.

If there are more than two developers of a discipline, it is recommended to designate one of those developers to be the team leader of that discipline. This person is preferably a senior developer.

The functional decision maker is, or functions as, the customer. He is responsible for determining the business requirements and has to take all the decisions that have something to do with the business rules.

The requirements of a project are described in the Functional Design. One team member is designated to be responsible for this Functional Design, preferably the functional decision maker, or at least someone who continuously keeps in touch with him.

Everyone has to perform a specific role, but it’s important to stress that they’re all in the same team and share the same goal.

Who’s doing what

The team members have specific tasks. These tasks are listed below. They are defined based on the key assumption that business people make business decisions, and technical people make technical decisions. The project managers balance power between developers and business people.
The team members have specific tasks as well as rights.

The functional decision maker and project manager have the right:

• to have an overall plan (to know what can be accomplished, when and at what cost);
• to change their minds about requirements and priorities (within a time box);
• to be informed of schedule changes.

The developers have the right:

• to know what is needed, with clear view on priority;
• to ask for and receive help from senior developers and functional decision maker;
• to make and update their own estimates.

The functional decision maker

The role of functional decision maker is defined based on the key assumption that business people make business decisions, and technical people make technical decisions.
The functional decision maker is the person who defines the business priorities and requirements. He must be someone who knows the problem domain or stays in close contact with someone who does.
Preferably, the functional decision maker is a representative of the customer. If the size of the project justifies this, see to get a permanent customer representative on-site.

If this isn’t possible, try this:

• Try to get someone to represent the customer locally;
• Try to get the customer on-site at meetings;
• Go and visit the customer often;
• Release code frequently to the customer;
• Expect to have misunderstandings!

In practice, it can be handy to have a functional designer have the role of functional decision maker. For projects that do not have a direct customer, this is the way to go. For projects that do, it is key that the functional designer has a permanent communication possibility with the real functional decision maker at the customer’s place.

The project manager

On a WUP project, the project management role is very important, but it’s very focused on management per se.
Most importantly, the success of the project manager depends on removing anything from the team’s path that doesn’t contribute to the objective of delivering a good web app on time.

Need something? Ask the manager

Looking out for things that are slowing down the team, expediting purchases, organizing meetings, reporting results; the project manager is merely the person who facilitates the team’s process. He’s also the one who deals with the financials and all that stuff that a developer doesn’t care about.
It is very important for a WUP project manager to know what not to do. When it comes to the process of technical planning, designing, testing, coding, and releasing: managers don’t do these things directly. The project manager causes these things to be done, coordinate their doing, and report the results.

These tasks are time-consuming as it is, and means that a project manager can’t be the functional decision maker (which might well be a fulltime job). Apart from the time issue, a project manager has completely different motivations than the customer. The project manager is focused on effectiveness of the process, rather than on business priorities. The business requirements and priority have to be determined by the expert, not by a busy manager.

The developers

The size of the team of developers obviously depends on the scope of the project. If a project is large enough, a team could consist of the following members.

Technical team

A technical team should consist of coders and at least one technical senior, who will act as the technical team’s leader.

The technical constraints and the detailed system design are documented in the Technical Design, preferably initially constructed by the senior. All developing team members are responsible for this Technical Design during the development phase. However, one person is designated to keep an eye on the developers’ efforts to keep the Technical Design up to date during the project. This person is preferably the technical team leader, but not necessarily.

Another technical team member checks the database and stored procedure scripts every week, according to a specific procedure that is described later in this document.

Design team

A design team should consist of designers and at least one design senior, who will act as the design team’s leader.
The design process will be described later in this document.

Interaction designer

Functional design and technical design do not satisfy the needs of the developers. What we miss here is an interaction design, which describes an intuitive page flow and where to find which specific part of the functionality.

To supply this, we need an interaction designer. This is a person who is perfectly able to read the functional design, and can talk with the technical team to verify whether his ideas are technically possible. He must be experienced in using web interfaces.

However, he can’t be the same person that made the functional design: a functional designer perfectly knows the functionality: any interface will do, as far as he is concerned. This implies that the functional designer can’t design an intuitive interface anymore. The same goes for technical persons: they know how systems work, which can’t be said for the end user of the system. Therefore, an interaction designer must not be too technical.

Text writers

Depending on the scope of the project and the agreements with the customer, text writers are needed to supply content.
Text writers for the Internet are heavily underestimated: in the end, content is what will attract the end user of the web system.
However, it is common practice that the customer itself takes care of the content. Larger companies obviously want their own people to fill and update public web sites.