Hi guys, I'm hoping for some feedback on a draft workflow and timescales i've put together for a potential web application i may be working on. The web application is more complex than what i've developed up until now, so i'm hoping i'm on the right track with what i've outlined below. It's difficult to know just how long things will take, especially the programming side of things, however i need to try and give estimates of how long each phase will take.
In a nutshell, the project would involve 3 different user groups accessing a feature rich website. There would be a CMS, dynamic form creation, multiple databases, photo albums, system generated graphs/charts, free form query building for end users via a simple web based UI, a variety of reporting techniques and methods to export reports. All of this will take some time to develop and will involve lots of requirements capture and testing, something i've not done a huge amount of for standard CMS website development work. So I'm a bit apprehensive about the timescales part - I'd just be interested to know if what i propose below seems reasonable for a preliminary outline of my proposed approach.
Grateful in advance for any pointers!
Requirements capture Discussion/interviews with prospective stakeholders and relevant parties to ascertain exact requirements for the website. Use cases and activity/sequence diagrams will be provided for reference and analysis of proposed system behaviour.
5 days
Conceptual Design In addition to ascertaining functional requirements in the requirements capture process, the conceptual design would be discussed and analysed by the relevant parties. The conceptual design would be revised until consensus is reached on the basic template to be used for the website.
5 days
Design Implementation Phase The design implementation would involve the realisation of the agreed conceptual design through the creation of the necessary graphics, layout and stylesheet information.
3 days
Database Design The requirements capture phase and the subsequent agreement on use cases, activity/sequence diagrams and analysis of the expected data would allow the creation of database designs and schema. These would be made available as Entity Relationship diagrams.
2 days
Application Design, Iterative Development & Usability Testing The website would be developed using object oriented programming, which would follow the mapping of the application via UML diagrams, which would again be available for reference.
At predefined milestones in the development process, usability tests would be designed and carried out with the intended end-users. Where necessary, the UI design would be modified following analysis of test results.
40 - 50 days
User Acceptance Testing Functionality would be tested through managed UAT sessions with all end users. Bugs/issues would be resolved as and when discovered.
5 days
Training Sessions Training sessions would be delivered to all user groups, along with comprehensive process reference guides.
5 days