Part project management, part IA and part usability,The Visual Learner's Guide to Managing Web Projects in a nice simple intro to the real secret of successful web sites: plan it before you build it.

Guess what-- it's free.

Download the PDF and go kill a few trees on the company dime-- you'll earn it back for them with what you learn. Hey! be sure to check out page 55. #'s!

from Accept responsibility to make your online project work

"Business managers can make online projects by accepting the responsibility for their design - or court disaster by letting technologists shape them."

This is an intriguing look at what happens to a project from conception to reality. The trouble comes when the project is handed over to implementers. "...they hire people and firms who have built software and systems. 'Those people and firms have their own interests', Thomas points out, 'and those interests won't necessarily align with the aims of your outfit. The outsiders want to bolster their list of stated achievements - their CVs, their corporate brag sheets. The individual developers want to work with bleeding-edge technology. The more pragmatic firms want to re-apply previous solutions.'"

As Sartre said, "hell is other people"

Guess what the recommended cure is? Something remarkably similar to an aspect of IA-- interaction design. The article recommends that managers "define in precise detail what users of the system can do - a tough, confronting task which takes place before a single line of code is written, and which requires managers with at least a small measure of technical savvy and a great deal of determination."

The article's key failing is not recognizing that business folks are no more trained to design a humane system than engineers. There are three part of success... what is technologically feasible, what is business necessary and what is user desirable/acceptable. Pay too much attention to one of elements, and the project's likelihood of failing shoots through the roof.