Can Businesses Really Drive The Creative Development Of Their Website?
Let’s say you have a business idea. Let’s say that this idea is to set up a driving school in your town. Now there is already a well-known driving school in your town but you want to break the monopoly because you believe that you have something better to offer. So you decide to launch a website where students can book lessons online, where they can track their progress, where people can purchase gift vouchers for driving lessons.
How do you get your idea across to a digital agency without your idea being scrambled in the process?
Traditional Web Development methodologies are counterproductive.
Building a website can be done through a Waterfall methodology whereby its development relies on a standard trickle-down process that might look like this:
- Project Scope
- Wireframing / Design
- Development
- Testing
- Launch
No brainer, you might say. Isn’t that the flow on which websites are built? The answer is yes. But it doesn’t have to be.
The Waterfall approach was modelled on industrial and mechanical industries where it makes sense to have sequential operation in order for physical goods to have uniformity.
But websites cannot survive on uniformity – they need to be unique, just like the shopfront of a high-street retailer.
When technology stepped into the digital age no other model challenged the Waterfall methodology and so the process was adapted by software developers. Eventually and inevitably, this process had to evolve. The traditional vertical hierarchy of command is just not as efficient in software production as it is in hardware production. One crucial element is amiss, affecting the end result and bumping up the cost.
That crucial element is collaboration.
You can be part of the development cycle.
Agile methodology is the alternative to the production line style of web development.
With Agile development, customers can be an integral part of the design and building process, giving feedback throughout the project instead of only giving feedback towards the end. Work flows organically in a loop rather than cascading vertically, allowing members of the development team to closely and collectively examine the process.
At Tiger Digital, we use an app that allows our clients to see exactly how their website is coming along. It’s unique to our business and helps us manage your expectations. If your requirements change during the development of your website, which they often do, we can apply these changes without having to go back to the drawing board.
Understand time and financial costs.
Basic informational websites tend to be built as fixed-price projects. On the other hand, if we are approached with an idea for a multi-functional website or an app, we will look at the requirements of the business and split the project in small chunks. We call these small chunks a ‘story’.
These stories will then be queued according to priority and placed on to a development cycle we call a ‘sprint’. One sprint usually takes two weeks and can only contain the amount of stories that can be completed in that two week cycle. The remaining stories – as well as changes or new requirements – will stay in the queue and will be pulled in to the next sprint.
At the end of each sprint we look back on the process and find out what went wrong, what went well, and what can be done better. Such projects may be charged per sprint.
Because one size does not fit all, our cross-functional approach to work enable us to find cost-effective solutions to your digital business in its immediate and foreseeable future, with you helping us drive the process.