Managing Web Projects: The Management of Large Projects and Programmes for Web‐space Delivery

Citation

du Preez, M. (2004), "Managing Web Projects: The Management of Large Projects and Programmes for Web‐space Delivery", The Electronic Library, Vol. 22 No. 6, pp. 534-535. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470410570901

Managing Web Projects is aimed at general managers, rather than information systems (IS) managers. It is also about the management of web projects, not web‐enabled project management. Rodney Turner, Director of EuroProjex, The European Centre for Project Excellence Limited and Professor of Project Management at Erasmus University Rotterdam, hoped the book would also be of interest to information systems project managers, and there is no reason why this should not be the case.

Turner sees project management as a generic skill that can be applied in all areas. He acknowledges the fact that there are different types of projects that each has its own needs and requires different methodologies for their management. Managing Web Projects now describes the core skills of project management required in the management of web‐delivery projects and also draws on conventional project management.

When Turner started out to write this book he first thought web project management was going to be a subset of information systems project management and Chapter 2 is also devoted to comparing web‐delivery projects to mainstream information system project management. When doing research for the book he soon discovered that web‐delivery projects are more than just IS/IT projects. They are not only about the information technology, they are:

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  change projects;

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  innovation projects;

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  business process re‐engineering projects;

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  publishing projects, and

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  marketing projects.

Chapter 3 is mainly concerned with change projects. These two chapters conclude Part 1 and the discussion on the nature of web projects.

Part 2 focuses on the management of web projects. Turner considers project starts in Chapter 4, showing the importance of getting the team working at peak efficiency from the outset. In chapters 5 and 9 he shows that the most significant determinants of project success is to gain the agreement of all the stakeholders to the success criteria and key success factors. The potential success criteria are considered in chapter 6 while the milestone plan, and the activity plans that support it, are discussed in chapter 7. The project organisation is described at two levels in chapter 8. The responsibility chart is now suggested as a tool to define the structure of the project organisation and the roles and responsibilities of the people involved at both levels.

Chapters 10 to 13 focus on how to manage various aspects of the project, such as:

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  managing quality and configuration;

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  managing cost;

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  managing time; and

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  managing risk.

The remainder of the book is concerned with how to control the project, finishing the work and managing programmes and portfolios of projects.

Managing Web Projects is not an academic treatise. It is intended for practising managers and is an expression of Turner's opinions. References were kept to a minimum, eliminating references to any of Turner's own research work. A multitude of examples are used to illustrate the discussion. An appendix provides essential planning forms described in the book as well as the forms for the case study project running throughout. It concludes with a useful index.