Web ReDesign: Workflow that Works

Steve MacLaughlin wrote this review of Web ReDesign: Workflow that Works , a book which transcends its title to address much more than workflow, and more generally than just on the Web. Steve promises that your copy will soon be tattered and marked -- and that's a good thing. Web ReDesign: Workflow that Works author Kelly Goto & Emily Cotler pages 253 publisher New Riders Publishing rating 9 reviewer Steve MacLaughlin ISBN 0735710627 summary Practical wisdom for Web creators on consulting, design, development and more rolled into a single readable volume.

There are books that attempt to impart the divine wisdom of consulting. There are books that detail best practices in graphic and usability design. There are books that detail the intricacies of software development. There are books that detail project management and surviving the technology lifecycle. But there are very few books that explain how all of these pieces work together successfully. Kelly Goto and Emily Cotler have pulled it off with masterful perfection in their new book Web ReDesign: Workflow that Works.

People, projects, technology, and clients do not work in a vacuum from one another. Process is the magnet that holds them all together. Goto and Cotler offer professionals a comprehensive "Core Process" to guide them through their Web projects. While other books may explain some of the tricks of the trade no book has really placed all of these best practices under the umbrella of a process or methodology. Perhaps that's because a lot of these processes have been closely guarded secrets in the highly competitive interactive services industry. It's almost as if Goto and Cotler are on a humanitarian mission to save clients and projects from future punishment under the hands of companies using poor or in some cases no processes at all.

Web ReDesign's Core Process is a five-step approach to producing successful Web projects. The five steps are Defining the Project, Developing Site Structure, Visual Design & Testing, Production & QA, and Launch & Beyond. And each phase is broken down further into steps and checkpoints in splendid detail. As someone who started out doing this kind of work I found myself making mental checkmarks throughout the book. "Did that. Did something like that. Man, it took me years to learn that I should do that. Where was this book six years ago when I needed it?"

Perhaps a book like this wasn't really possible until now. The profession had to go through its ugly duckling stages where individuals and companies tried to figure out what worked and what didn't. Grafting parts from consulting, marketing, project management, and software development into some freakish process monster that often resulted in turning clients into an angry torch-carrying mob. Thankfully Web ReDesign has finally arrived and it is certainly no Bride of Frankenstein. The processes are spelled out in clear language and the authors repeat certain key points in case you missed something along the way.

It's easy to get sidetracked reading Web ReDesign with all the sidebars, charts, sample forms, and interviews. But this is a good thing! The tips and sidebars along the way spell out in greater detail how to put the process into action, and what to do when trouble arises. The forms and charts are some of the most thorough ever published, and thankfully you can download most of them on the companion website located at www.web-redesign.com. Throughout the book Goto and Cotler call on experts like Lynda Weinman, David Siegel, Jeffrey Zeldman, and Jakob Nielsen to offer their perspective on a given topic. The overall design and layout work done by the folks at New Riders is phenomenal and the visual presentation of the book is really first rate.

The one big question I have about the books is its title: Web ReDesign. That's because this is a book that can be used for first time Internet initiatives just as well as for redesign projects. Perhaps the authors had some dual purpose in mind for the title: If you're doing this for the first time, you need to rethink the conventional wisdom that Web projects are a black art with no best practices. Or if you didn't use a process the first time, then you've probably learned how valuable it is to have a proven methodology to avoid repeating mistakes.

Goto and Cotler have produced a book that no Web professional, whether they're a consultant, project manager, designer, programmer, or specialist, should be without. Web ReDesign is one of those books that should be kept close at hand during projects of all shapes and sizes. It won't take long before your copy is either severely dog-eared or has post-it flags sticking up throughout it. Get your hands on a copy before the competition does.

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain. Have your own book review to contribute? Check out the book review guidelines, then write away!

Comments

Is This For Real?

[Patrick McRotch]

I just found this [slashdot.org] at the Slashdot Privacy Watch [slashdot.org] page. This article (and the others posted by Slashdot Privacy Watch) present some seriously scary possibilities. I'm posting this in order to have your comments, CmdrTaco.

What is the Slashdot Customer Profile?

Slashdot is owned by VA Linux, and VA Linux is a for-profit Corporation. This means that, like other corporations, Slashdot must maintain a customer profile for every user (yes, even you Anonymous Cowards!). These customer profiles are kept in Slashdot's master MySQL database, which is archived on a frequent basis to preserve VA Linux's valuable Intellectual Property rights to its' customer information. The Customer Profile contains many fields, such as the email address you used to register your Slashdot account. In addition, it contains these fields [slashdot.org] which are accessed in users.pl [slashcode.com], line 1898.

They're Tracking WHAT?

You may have noticed that the Customer Profile contains a field called $iplist. You're not dreaming, this is a list of every IP address anyone has used to access Slasdot - ever. Slashdot has a perfectly legitimate reason [slashdot.org] for maintaining these detailed records on every customer. However, while every Slashdot user understands that the privacy of each Slashdot user is paramount to the current management of Slashdot, we must also understand that Slashdot is property, and that it has been bought - and sold - before. Therefore we must not consider the implication of the existence of Slashdot Customer Profiling under the existing management, but rather the implications under any future management.

Who Would Want my IP?

Let's assume, for the sake of argument only, that VA Linux decides to sell Slashdot to DoubleClick [doubleclick.com] in order to boost its' short-term cash supply. Doubeclick would be looking at Slashdot mainly as an Intellectual Property asset, and its' customer database as the primary portion of that asset (because Slaschode is GPL'd). How, then, can VA Linux maximize the resale value of Slashdot's Intellectual Property assets? By tracking every possible piece of information. The list of IP addresses used by every Slashdot user, reverse-correlated by email, would provide a very lucrative marketing tool to a would-be buyer of Slashdot. Doubleclick could use this Intellectual Property to:

• Correlate web hits to member sites by IP address, sending an email to every Slashdot user who visits a target site.
• Correlate web hits by IP address and present customized content to each Slashdot user who visits a target site, for instance: "Welcome to Superdomains.com, Slashdot user Jamie!"
  
  

It is easy to see why recording the IP profiles of every Slashdot customer maximizes the value of the Slashdot Customer Database. The question is, should you be given the option to opt-out?

Last time I posted this, I was immediately censored. Please distribute this and other Slashdot Privacy Watch publications extensively until CmdrTaco responds satisfactorily.

Re:Its all a bit too positive for me.

[KnightStalker]

The Mythical Man Month was written by Fred Brooks.