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The section detailing the web development lifecycle was provided in order to offer an introduction to the high level stages of the web development process undertaken by TeCS. Here we focus on the aspects of the web development lifecycle most directly involving you, our client.

1. Initial Consultation

We understand that the primary concern to any Client is not how their website will look, or even operate, but the business benefits and justification for undertaking the project in the first place. For that reason our initial consultation (which, where possible, will be in person) we will seek to understand what you are trying to achieve. We look at the resulting outputs from your website, the services you seek to provide to either your internal staff in the case of an intranet portal, or potential users in the case of an internet application.

Further to this, we seek to understand how the proposed website outputs and services relate to your existing business processes, as well as the resulting dependencies and the potential for streamlining your business as a result of the website implementation. Most fundamentally, we also try to understand the scale (and anticipated future scale) of your website in terms of data and usage, as well as the feasibility of your project within the context of your required deliver time-frame. This information, and more besides, feeds into a Project Proposal – which is a clear definition of the high-level requirements of the system – submitted to the you, our client, for approval.

2. Designing the Website

In reference to our discussion of the web development lifecycle, this phase combines the information and outputs from the Project Specification stage, the Site Architecture stage, and process related (system-walkthrough) aspects of the Site Design Cycle, in order to deliver a High Level Requirements Specification to the client for approval.

Designed in a top-down manner, the High Level Requirements Specification takes the high level definition of the outputs and services (described in the Project Proposal) and breaks them down into their component parts. All components are still defined in plain English at this stage as the Client must be closely involved in this process, and are iteratively mapped to an eventual and intuitive system sitemap.

The process of establishing the sitemap and component functionality is further facilitated by functional walkthroughs of the operation of the website from the user perspective. This ensures that state maintenance and dependency considerations are accounted for from within the proposed website, as well as outside the system. The High Level Requirements Specification also includes more detailed site architecture specifications, again building on those agreed within the Project Proposal.

3. Graphic User Interface (GUI) Design

Here the proposed wire-frame layout of each screen within the system is discussed and agreed with the Client. From the development team’s perspective, once the wire-frame screen designs are signed-off by the client, they can proceed with the Project Development Phase. Of course, before the development team can actually proceed, the Low Level Website Design document introduced within the section discussing the web development lifecycle will need to be developed and made available to the development team, as well as the associated project plan.

In parallel to the development team beginning the Project Development phase of the system, the website skin (colour and style theme) are finalised together with related graphics and any textual content that pages within the website may depend on (see the Web Content Collation stage of the web development lifecycle).

The output from this phase is agreement on the GUI mock-ups: the precise look and feel of each and every page of the website.

4. User acceptance Testing (UAT)

Following delivery of the website to the Client for testing, User Acceptance Testing is the process by which employees or agents of the Client are tasked with establishing that the delivered website is both working and fit-for-purpose. The delivery will have already undergone rigorous testing by personnel within TeCS, and TeCS will have signed off the system as ready for deployment – however, the system cannot be deployed to production without the signed approval of the Client.

Depending on the scale of the development, the process of user acceptance testing might relate to a milestone delivery: the delivery of a part of the website that can be user acceptance tested in isolation from other parts of the website yet to be developed within the project delivery schedule.

5. Site Launch

The website, fully tested and approved by both TeCS and the Client, is deployed to the production hosting environment, this installation being carried out by specialist members of the support team at TeCS. From here our standard warranty period is effective, and a subsequent support agreement can be established at the discretion of the client.

Why not contact us to discuss your web development requirements with the design team at TeCS.