Stage three is where the bulk of the work happens, but getting this work
done well depends on the planning and documentation completed during
stage two. The important thing about stage three is follow-through. It's the
project manager's job to make sure the team sticks to the plan. Check that
everyone is following the functional spec and style guide, that they are
using the proper naming conventions and version controls, and that backup
files are being saved on the server.
An example of where good planning went bad was during my brief stint at the e-commerce site. The production company they hired went through extensive planning and developed beautiful documentation and style guides. However, when it came to actually building
the site, they didn't pay enough attention to the work their contractors
were doing. Shoddy work by a single part-time HTML contractor delayed the
site's launch by weeks.
Instead of following the naming conventions and size
specifications set by the documentation, he took it on himself to give all
the HTML pages and the image references totally random names. So, when my
team placed our image work on the server, nothing worked. It was a terrible
crisis and caused multiple meetings, lots of yelling, and revisions galore.
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