Web project management guidelines released

We’ve just published a new report on E-consultancy dedicated to Web Project Management, which turns out to be less of a fine art and more of a social science.

This new research is based on feedback from more than 600 project managers, who we surveyed and interviewed to find out some of the common factors found in successful web projects.

After the jump there's a glimpse of some of the key findings…

1. Nearly half of all respondents do not have a structured approach to managing their web projects.

Nearly half of all respondents (45.5%) do not have a structured approach to managing their web projects. This rises to 67% in the retail industry. 

Companies without a structured approach are the least likely to achieve their project goals, least likely to deliver customer satisfaction, are least able to deal with change during the course of the project and are less likely to achieve deadlines, meet budgets and deliver positive ROI. 

A lack of processes and skills can mean that:

• Teams don’t have visibility of the progress of the project and its’ associated risks and issues;
  
  
• There isn’t a consistent vision of what the team are trying to deliver;
  
  
• Estimation of the resources and effort required for the project involved is either poor or non-existent;
  
  
• Projects are planned in isolation from the rest of the business and are consequently poorly supported.

2. Budgets and deadlines are difficult to control

Nearly 58% of respondents say that their projects always achieve their goals, and yet only 21% of them say they always achieve deadlines and only 39% always achieve budget and a positive ROI. 

In fact over 8% of respondents never meet their project deadlines and nearly 6% never deliver their projects within budget

3. Web projects are integrated with the rest of the business less than half of the time, and customer satisfaction is hard to achieve

Less than half (46%) work to an annual plan that is aligned with their overall business strategy and only 56% say that they share common goals with the rest of the business. 

Whilst nearly 80% say they involve the end customer in gathering requirements for their projects, and 72% involve the customer in testing, only half consistently achieve customer satisfaction with their projects.

4. Teams know that their requirements will change during the course of the project but yet they struggle to deal with it when it actually happens

Nearly 88% of respondents say that they set their requirements knowing that they are flexible to change during the course of the project and yet half of organisations say that changing requirements during the course of their projects is one of the biggest challenges they face.

5. Excellent project management is considered crucial to project success, but project management methods are not valued, and many organisations don’t use qualified project managers.

Good communications and excellent project management are considered to be the two most important factors in determining the success of a web project and yet 22% of projects are managed by members of the marketing or commercial team rather than a qualified project manager. 

Knowledge of specific project management methods is considered to be the least important skill in managing web projects.

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Subscribers can access our Web Project Management best practice guidelines for more insight into what works, and what doesn’t, when it comes to coordinating web projects.

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