Choosing the Right Project

Choosing the right types of projects to work on is an extremely important part of the Web application development plan.

Assessing your resources, technical skills, and publishing capabilities should be your first goal. Taking the 3 tiers into consideration, devise a list of all available resources that can be categorically assigned to each tier.

The next consideration should be the cost. Do you have a budget with which to complete this project? How much will it cost you to design, develop and deliver a complete project with a fair amount of success? These are questions that should be answered before you sign any deals or contracts.

Let's look at an example. A company called ABC needs to develop a Web application that will display sales information created by different sales agents. The data is updated daily through a completely automated process from all 3 service tiers. The client tells you that this entire project must be done in ASP/SQL server and that you should host the application as well.

After assessing all your resources, you and your team come to a conclusion that the company is unable to do data backups on a daily basis. After further discussion, you realize that this is a very important part of the setup for your client, and you should not risk taking a chance with the project. It's very likely that you will be more prepared next time around, when a similar project lands on your desk, so you decline the job and recommend someone else who has the capabilities to do it right now.

The Phases in a Web Application Project

The Web application development process has 4 phases:

Envisioning the nature and direction of the project

Devising the plan

Development

Testing, support and stability

Let's look at each of these in more detail.

1. Envisioning the nature and direction of the project

In this phase, the management and developers assigned to the project come together and establish the goals that the solution must achieve. This includes recognizing the limitations that are placed on the project, scheduling, and versioning of the application. By the end of this phase, there should be clear documentation on what the application will achieve.

2. Devising the plan

In this phase, you and your team must determine the "how's" of the application.

What scripting language is most appropriate, which features must be included, and how long will it take? These are some of the questions that must be answered through this planning phase. The main tangents at this point are the project plan and functional specification. The project plan determines a timeframe of events and tasks, while the functional specification outlines in detail how the application will function and flow.