Fluent Simplicity

There’s nothing more exciting than a site launch. It’s a mix of elation and anxiety, amplified if you’re working on a highly visited site or application. Years of agency experience (starting in 1995, to be exact) has yielded one powerful tool when planning a site launch.

The tool: Plan carefully.

Planning has everything to do with a good (and flawless) site launch. I’m ask that you look beyond the obvious, the project documentation itself. Most pm’s worth their salt have extensive documentation (wireframes, functional briefs, project plans and diagrams from the usual suite of tools from Microsoft). If you need to buffer your skills in that arena, like most of the pm’s I’ve seen in recent years, read Scott Berkun’s book: The Art of Project Management. It’s actually one of the few books on my desk.

I’m referring to the technical architecture of a site or project. Most web operations, who make up a majority of the market, take this for granted. Maybe they even give it a cute name. Most of the time this offering is pasted together and offers no documentation or logic. If you really want a site to launch successfully, make sure the architecture is solid.

Some developers love to use the word “recursive,” as if it will help point out the flaws in recent work. Many times this testing is needed as the application itself is unstable or poorly coded. At least two vendors I’ve seen in the past 6 months write code or SQL so poorly that a site experienced visible response issues. Search executions that lasted seconds (rather then milliseconds).

Good development practices involve testing, but do it intelligently. Many a pm or developer fails to realize the inherent power in documenting their testing. Not only does this establish a rich source of data for pattern discovery, but it provides useful information to discover the problem.

As for the launch:

• Give yourself a few weeks to kick the tires and deal with any issues. Do not make major changes in this time period.
• If you are an agency, manage client expectations, particularly with timing. If necessary, tell them no.
• Have DNS and any other issues resolved ahead of time. If possible, preposition your s and other assets.
• Plan on a formal debrief with business and technical stakeholders.