How Many People Work in Your Internet Department?

WorkinTooHard asks: "Two years ago, I took the job of Internet Marketing Manager for a international company, with a crazy idea that I could convince senior management that the internet wasn't a fad. The only problem was that I didn't expect a (respected) mid-level manager to be the road block. We are in the middle of a major website redesign (the current site has not been updated in over 8 years) and everyone is asking why it takes so long to complete, and almost daily I have to explain that I do not have enough manpower. Of course, I can't prove ROI until the new site is launched (a great Catch22). How many people do you have working in/on your company's Internet/Intranet and Extranet sites and applications? How many full-time web-application developers, content providers, analytics people, UI designers, email marketing people, and so forth?" "Please note that this includes anyone who works directly in building and maintaining your companies current website, electronic marketing and Internet applications. If you can, include the size of your company, number of employess, the number of active products being sold/supported, and how much outsourcing you do? The company I am currently working for has over 13,000 active products and over 30,000 products which need to be supported. We do no outsourcing, have over 900 employess in North America (over 8000 worldwide) and a total of 2 full time web developers, 1 part time developer/SQL guru and 1 content/data person as well as two people in our MarCom office which periodically write copy."

Comments

Push Back

[RunFatBoy.net]

I'm not sure whether to answer the actual question asked, or the implicit call for help....

Anything that people don't understand, they tend to generalize and make higher level models of the underlying processes. I think it'd be beneficial for this manager to sit in on a couple design meetings and/or code reviews so that he can get a feel for all that is involved.

I think you're going to see wildly varying answers regarding sizes of teams, depending upon site complexity, etc. The real issue here is that it looks like you need to learn to push back.

Your posting sounds more like a distress message than an actual question. If you feel you're understaffed and you're feeling heat from the top, look these guys straight in the eye and say "If you refuse to offer more staff, we can only reasonably expect to complete around this date", and don't flinch. They'll respect you more in the long run and know you mean business.

Jim http://www.runfatboy.net/ -- Exercise, Web 2.0 style.

Re:Push Back

[AKAImBatman]

I think you're going to see wildly varying answers regarding sizes of teams, depending upon site complexity, etc. The real issue here is that it looks like you need to learn to push back.

That's a nice sentiment, except for one problem: He's a manager, not a coder. He doesn't need to push back, he needs to spend his time managing. Which means that instead of coding, he needs to spend his time doing other things like:

• Market the idea to the rest of company. Sending out mockups and ROI case studies of other companies can entice your manager and/or his manager, and do a lot to help sell why more resources are needed.
• Use your budget more effectively. Your company may not have given you leave to hire full-time employees, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you can't hire contractors to build tricky or time-consuming portions. Bonus points if you can get stuff auto-generated.
• Build trust. You need to gain a reputation as someone who gets things done, and can be trusted with a task. If you build that trust, you'll be trusted that you'll use extra resources wisely rather than empire-building. Yeah, it's difficult with limited resources. Figure it out. You're a manager now, so you'd better find a way.
• Don't make excuses. Learn to put a positive spin on timetables, instead. Using tools like Microsoft Project (blech) can allow you to chart out how many man-hours something will take. It can also help you show how it will get done faster if you have more resources.
• Don't commit to a project unless you and your superiors are agreed on the timetables. Eveyone expects some slippage on large projects, but too much will cost you dearly. If you already agreed to a messed up timetable (or didn't give one!), then you may need to eat some crow when you present a realistic projection. You should still give that projection, though! Without it, you'll just look incompetent. With it, you'll at least admit to a mistake and ask to correct it.

All in all, I don't hold very much hope for the story submitter. Being a manager is very different from being a programmer. If he's been in his position for two years and hasn't learned how to play the game yet, then he may not be cut out for it. Being a manager is a cut-throat business, and there are only two ways to survive: Either be really good, or be really good at brown nosing. The former is usually preferrable; especially if your bosses are no slouches.

Re:Push Back

[Anonymous Coward]

If your post had any more links to your website, I think it would collapse and form a black hole.

Re:Push Back

[JehCt]

Agree that it's a call for help. The writer should not be doing web development in house. He should have come up with a list of requirements, obtained quotations and time estimates, selected a contractor, signed a contract, and been done with this months ago.

He's using brute force where knowledge would be a better input. Classic.

Re:Push Back

[KarmaMB84]

If they won't provide the manpower to do the work now, why do you think they'd pay for manpower + profit to a contractor?

Re:Push Back

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

He's a manager, not a coder. He doesn't need to push back, he needs to spend his time managing. Which means that instead of coding, he needs to spend his time doing other things like:

Like? Like pushing back. That's exactly what managers are for. They don't code, they push their agenda when and where it needs pushing.

I'll tell you, though, I've worked in a few places both big and small, and never experienced this problem. Most of the managers I've worked with, are all over the new paradigm of the Interweb, and the synergy it offers our customers, the staggering ROI potential....

Re:Push Back

[DaveJay]

Here are some handy things to phrase more politely than I'm phrasing them here:

"I can't tell you when it will be finished until we know exactly what we're building. Help us nail down the specifications, and I'll be able to give you a finish date with the current staff and workload."

"There is a finite amount of manpower available to do this work, and the schedule I gave you is firm, unless we either add people -- and that won't be a one-to-one improvement, it will depend on how much work can be run in parallel -- or reduce scope. Help us do that, and I'll be able to get you a new completion date."

"I know you want these changes in the initial launch, and I want to give you these changes in the initial launch. However, there will be some impact to how long it will take, because a lot of work we've already completed will need to be redone. Help us nail down the new specifications, and I'll be able to give you a finish date with the current staff and workload."

Repeat ad nauseum until the project is finished.

Re:Push Back

[Anonymous Coward]

Or become a government manager.

Re:Push Back

[pixel.jonah]

Because that's not how big corps work. They are much more likely to spend $x to hire an outside firm or consultants than the same $x to staff up.

Two cases in point:

1) My company (3 people) was hired to redesign the corporate website (twice) and build the entire employee intranet for a $300m/7,000 employee company. This client had a 60+ person web team in the corporate division alone, yet had to hire out to a tiny team of crack individuals to actually get anything done.

2) I'm working with another client now - smaller but much older - that would much rather have us (as the consulting firm) hire and manage the people we need for the project and pass the cost on to them (plus a markup) than hire internally.

I don't understand the accounting side enough to know what the benefits are there, but from a management perspective, it's very nice to be able to make a single "entity" responsible for the project (as kind of a black box) than to have to think about and deal with an internal "team".

Thank you for listening to .jonah's voice from the trenches for today.

Re:Push Back

[Anonymous Coward]

Jim http://www.runfatboy.net/ -- Exercise, Web 2.0 style.

Completely off-topic so I post anonymously... but seriously I found this 5 seconds before I read your post.

That guy should be your Web 2.0 excercise mascot.

Re:Push Back

[sog_abq]

Not only contractors, but consider interns as well. Lots of capable college kids are willing to sell their sould for an internship, so take advantage of the oppertunity. You get cheap disposable labor, and they get that all-valuable 'job-experience'. Plus, you never know when you might stumble upon a long-term fit for your company.

Re:Push Back

[Anonymous Coward]

> He's a manager, not a coder. He doesn't need to push back ...

That's nonsense, and you know it.

You know it, because later you said:

>Don't commit to a project unless you and your superiors are agreed on the timetables.

That's what push-back is, and that's the way to earn respect.

Management is negotiation, and negotiation requires push-back.

Without push-back, you're nothing but a push-over.

Re:Push Back

[eonlabs]

"Either be really good, or be really good at brown nosing. The former is usually preferrable; especially if your bosses are no slouches"
There is a destinction between a brown noser and a suck up:


Depth perception.

I would not recommend the former over the latter.

Re:Push Back

[geekoid]

They don't need to be outsourceing web development, they need to hire managers who can manage people, and understand the managment issues in IT departments.

Re:Push Back

[RobertLTux]

a suggestion for the article poster buy a few copies of the book Death March: The Complete Software Developer's Guide to Surviving "Mission Impossible" Projects isbn 0137483104 and commit the book to memory but the big part of the book is about a diagram die | survive fail | - succeed | that discribes the versions of death marches

Re:Push Back

[corbettw]

I don't understand the accounting side enough to know what the benefits are there

They're called "recurring costs", and hiring outside consultants don't generate them while hiring employees do. Let's say you have to accomplish some project, and it's going to require roughly 1600 man hours to complete (three programmers working for three months, eight hour days). You don't have three programmers with enough time to dedicate to this project. So, you have two choices:

a) hire three guys
b) hire an outside firm to do the work

Finding and hiring three qualified programmers is going to take longer than finding one qualified firm, but even if it wasn't it's still cheaper to go with route b in this instance. Three programmers are going to cost you about $250,000 a year, give or take $50,000 depending on your market. So even if you spend $100 per hour on the outside firm, you're coming out ahead at only $160,000. Not to mention, once this project is done, if you go with route a, you're now stuck with three more employees, for whom you have to find something to do or else they're just going to get disgruntled and spend all day posting on Slashdot.

Re:Push Back

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Contractors? You mean those guys who send out mock-ups 2 months into a project, but wait for 5 months into a 6 month project ask me what "Websphere" is (It's the platform for product that they are replacing), "Oh CVS, I wasn't able to access the account you gave me 4 months ago?" and my favorite "We tried to download the images via FTP, but couldn't connect. Eh? What's 'SFTP'? We thought that was atypo."

By that time, the business is totally committed, the boss failed to hold the contractors to the contract, and the boss' boss is waiting for a deliverable. You could certainly cancel the contract, but that pretty much means loosing your job. Maybe they deserve to get fired.

I've never been a decision maker in a project like this, but I would say this happens more then half the time with businesses that I work with. Past schedule and over budget.

Re:Push Back

[pixel.jonah]

That's quite possible. I wasn't recommending a solution, simply talking about my experience.

As another example, I know (first hand) about a large ($8bln) company that owns its own ships and stuff, but outsources its web work. It seems to be one of those things that companies "think" is outside of their core competency and so would rather farm it out like it's "rocket surgery" or something. ;)

To another point my observation is that - web designers/developers - esp. good ones - tend to be independent minded folk who wouldn't be caught dead working at a megacorp.

Re:Push Back

[tha_mink]

Of course, I can't prove ROI until the new site is launched (a great Catch22).

What? What? Of course you can prove ROI before the new site is born. of course you can. What you can't do is provide ROI before the site is launched. YOUR JOB IS TO PROVE ROI BEFORE THE JOB EVEN STARTS!!! I can't believe you turn to us to say..."Yeah, bummer..." That's what you should be doing for a living. Right? Right???

Re:Push Back

[Skapare]

But this doesn't usually take into account that the people brought in by the contractor to do the job are usually less competent, and almost certainly less motivated to do a job they would be proud of. The working conditions lots of these contractors, especially the big ones, create, generate a lot of turnover ... mostly over.

You're far better off finding better ways to schedule and manage projects so you don't find yourself in a pinch one day with work for 6 people when you only have enough continuing work to keep 3 on staff. Of course you can't always control this. But at a 50% project failure rate, I wouldn't want to take the risk. I'd rather bit the bullet and hire a 4th person and try to spread the workload out, and not worry if one job is posting on Slashdot 9 months down the road.

Re:Push Back

[Skapare]

It's not really a matter of whether it's inside staff or outside contractors doing the work that effects the quality. It's more a case of size. The larger the corporation, regardless of which side of the contract they are on, the worse the results are. In the case of a 7000 person company hiring a 3 person company to do the job, that's likely to produce much better results. It wouldn't be so if the 7000 person company hired out to a 20000 person company that sent 3 people over to do it. The 3 person company isn't scraping people off the job boards. The 20000 person company has to.

Re:Push Back

[hdavis_97]

["If you refuse to offer more staff, we can only reasonably expect to complete around this date", and don't flinch.] For a major update with so few people, I'd get a bid on the job from a top website company, and make sure they know that they may end up with 100% of the load or a smaller part, or the project may not go forward at all. You get an independant cost/schedule/man-hours opinion you can use to get the support needed internal or external, or have it scrapped. If you wind up doing it in-house, you still have the original bid to show how you stack up against outsourcing. If you get some management support for using external resources, then you can offload a portion to meet your schedule and budget. With any of the external options, don't forget to include an internal project manager and whatver else you need for internal support - interfacing will take a lot of hours.

Re:Push Back

[Anonymous Coward]

Something tells me if you haven't yet figured out the difference between losing and "loosing" you deserve to "loose" that job.

Re:Push Back

[goonies]

it's almost ancient knowledge, but fits to your comment:

on time, on budget, on scope/quality... pick any two

Re:Push Back

[joeyjoejo1200]

I disagree - I work for a large company and we are doing a COMPLETE redesign of our website without any help. This is not using any existing databases, and only highering 3 data entry contractors for 3 weeks we are gettting the thing done in 3 months, and this is for a company with over 2000 products with offices in multiple countries. Yeah we said it would take 6 months and management said we have 3, but we are getting it done with only 2.5 people working on it fulltime.

Re:Push Back

[kalidasa]

It all depends upon the size of the vendor. If you hire a small vendor with employee ownership, you'll usually get people who take a lot of pride in their work and know that future business for them depends upon the quality of the results they give you. If you outsource to a big consulting contractor, you'll get much more uneven results. With big contracting vendors, I'd say we've had a 50% success rate for the projects I've worked on; with small single-purpose shops, the success rate has been much higher. The important part, though, is to hire somebody with a reputation for excellence who's small enough that the reputation can't be the product of a small percentage of the firm's employees.

Re:Push Back

[Fred_A]

"I can't tell you when it will be finished until we know exactly what we're building. Help us nail down the specifications, and I'll be able to give you a finish date with the current staff and workload."

Ah that one's always good for a laugh in any corporation...

Nailing down specifications... haha. Right. How about dancing girls while you're at it ? :)

Re:Push Back

[Xerp]

Um. That sounds like ALL the staff at my place, not just the contractors. Mind you, 40% of the staff are contractors, so maybe its contageous?

As for the "Internet Department"? Just 1 - I mean, the internet isn't all that important anyway... is it?

Re:Push Back

[singleantler]

A couple of things to add...

Pay for the assessment from the outside company, it makes it much easier for them to put some proper staff time in to it. You can usually do a deal that the cost of the assessment gets taken off the overall bill if they get the full project.

Also remember that the web company has staff that have experience working together, even if some of them are freelancers, they are likely to be freelancers the company has used before. An internal project which needs to hire people in will need to factor in the extra time that those people need to gel in to a team (and the management time that can help that happen.)

Re:Push Back

[Critical Facilities]

(Pushing Tin Quote)
          "There is a finite amount of manpower available to do this work"

"Uh oh, looks like you're going down the tubes."

"What? I'm not going down the tubes!"

"Yeah, it happens every time you use the word FINITE."

Re:Push Back

[Skapare]

The way you phrased that got me thinking. If the decisions by (potential) clients to use or not use a particular contracting vendor tend to be made on the basis of how well the salespeople socialize, I think this will be known, perhaps even if just subconciously, by the people doing the actual work, and they will be less proud of it (and less interested in committing their heart and soul into the work), than they would if the people who make those decisions are making them based on the quality of their (or their team's) work.

One problem in contracting is that when the client might next have new work, the team could very well be off on a different project at a different client. The client wanting them back has to decide to delay the project to get the good team, or find another team and move on.

Re:Push Back

[exKingZog]

We had a contractor like that in my place when I originally joined. Despite a history of incompetance, he was retained until, asked to deliver a web app for $bigretailchain he refused to show me any code until the week before the project deadline, when he downloaded a beta of VS2005 and mashed up a complete pile of shite in a weekend. He was shown the door, and I now have a good in-house team who understand the company's requirements and produce results. We've been skittish of contractors ever since.

Re:Push Back

[Bing Tsher E]

But this doesn't usually take into account that the people brought in by the contractor to do the job are usually less competent, and almost certainly less motivated to do a job they would be proud of.

My experience, working in a division of a large company where the average employee age is 55 years, and layoff and attrition policies over the years have 'filtered' things to the point where the whole PLACE is stacked with deadwood dud employees, is that long term permanent employees are not 'motivated to do a job they would be proud of.'

It's really weird, working in a place with top-to-bottom apathy and lethargy. And really weird to be one of the youngest employees at 46.

Re:Push Back

[Bing Tsher E]

Depends on what industry you are in.

If you're involved in a 'durable goods' industry, the Internet might be the way you access the McMaster-Carr catalog these days. Oh, and you might be recording your hours on a timecard system based on the corporate Intranet.

If you're selling virtual crap or throwaway consumer items, or are some form of marketing scum, maybe it's really important.

Re:Push Back

[Anonymous Coward]

I work on my school's website and we have 4 people currently doing all of the work. We just finished our redesign a couple weeks ago. We had our old design for about 3 years. It took us an unbelievable ammount of time to get the new one up too. About 3 out of 4 months was spent waiting on the server. We don't actually run the server, we rent it out, so we didn't get bitched out too hard since the server issues were beyond our control.

Of our 4 staff members 3 of them are leaving next year (I'll be the one staying) and I've heard rumors that 2 more guys are supposed to come in but I am having a lot of doubt about that which means I'll have to update the website on my own.

Whats really a shame is how much of our productivity time is wasted. Our school newspaper is published bi-weekly and comes out on Fridays. It is sent to be printed on Tuesday which gives me from then until Friday to have all of the stories/images posted on time. Even with 4 guys we are still understaffed. Our school paper is quite large and with a lot of graphics and such, we often only have enough time to get the top stories up. So the only time we work is from Tuesday-Friday every other week. We do spend some time updating a few tiny things and making sure it works in other browsers and such, but must of the time is wasted.

0...

[paulgrant]

I'm doing it all by myself.
+ developing the intranet
+ developing the IT infrastructure
+ system administration
+ desktop administration
+ graphics design for print + web

STOP WHINING
pick up a book, pick a good server and get it done.

1st post :)

Re:0...

[Anonymous Coward]

What a lame response. Seriuosly though, it depends on the size of the site and the kind of technologies in use. The more professional sites have different people doing the design and the programming of more complex web systems like ASP/PHP, SQL, etc.

Re:0...

[Anonymous Coward]

and you're probably not very good at any.

Re:0...

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. You simply can't read 100 books and then magically be able to do everything. Sounds like you work at a very small place and aren't qualified to give comments.

Re:0...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you'd read the first sentence, you'd notice that s/he isn't a developer. Stop trolling, and go back to coding. Not 1st post. :)

Re:0...

[paulgrant]

>You simply can't read 100 books and then magically be able to do everything.

Sure, I agree.
- Be selective in your reading
(a 100 crappy books will not do u any good; 5-6 good books will)
- Learn (APPLY!) your lessons slowly/carefully;
- Build progressively better websites/apps.

>Sounds like you work at a very small place and aren't qualified to give comments.

No; a manufacturer who places no value on any sort of IT expense (family business, in case u're curious as to why I'm working there). Prior to that I worked as a systems programmer, both salaried and contract for a number of years.

--

Put another way; how many people here have worked for managers who spent gobs of money paying people to do things for them they weren't even qualified to spec out? How many of those projects end up being a bust because they weren't designed by somebody who _wasn't_ knowledgeable about the technologies involved?

Designing a website is not rocket science; particularly given the 18 million choices of platforms, packages, components available now. If he/she can't design a website thats decent, what are they doing in that position?

Re:0...

[paulgrant]

>it depends on the size of the site and the kind of technologies in use.

sure; given he/she can't even calculate ROI on it, why the hell should they shooting for something complicated? Start small, build on it _AFTER_ you've proved your point about ROI; and if this person is complaining about it, picture my situation (which is _infinitely_ worse).

>*complex* web systems like ASP/PHP
almost a contradiction there :)

It's A TRAP!

[EmperorKagato]

This sounds like a trap.

If you really want to know who works on our intranet site that is an IS employee; 0.

Re:It's A TRAP!

[Anonymous Coward]

7734

Zero?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhh. I would assume most companies would outsource that stuff unless its thier primary business. We happen to develop software and hardware and it has nothing to do with the internet and our clients are pretty much never near an internet connection -- so why would we want to advertise on it?

Thats what trade rags are for.

WTF

[SQLz]

Is an "Internet" department?

Re:WTF

[Frostalicious]

He manages the whole internet with only two guys. And management still complains. What hardasses.

Re:WTF

[Lehk228]

the internet department is everyone who fucks off online rather than doing their job. aka 80% of the office.

Re:WTF

[MyLongNickName]

It is hard working for Al.

Re:WTF

[cdrudge]

80%? Why so low a percentage?

Re:WTF

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Is an "Internet" department?

Why they are the guys in charge of the free porn, of course!

Re:WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what you get for joining Quixtar, the online clone of Amway.

Re:WTF

[nihaopaul]

maybe they have 'webmasters' working there, ever notice how a guy with the title 'web master' cannot explain his role in a company? i love to quiz them infront of their boss when i sit through meetings and they are introduced as 'web master' i finally finish them off with, 'so what part of the web have you mastered?' paul

Re:WTF

[himself]

SQLz asked:
>
> WTF Is an "Internet" department?
>

      Laugh all you want: my last job was in the Computer Department of a verrrry old, high-profile architectural firm in Baaahst'n. I'm not certain -- Rob The Archivist could confirm this -- but I believe the singluar "Computer" referred to all the technology that the firm had invested in prior to, uh, 1998 (and that was a little IBM box for the accountants).

      However, in their favor I should admit that their first "PCs" for the staff were Sun Sparc Sations for the architects and Macs for everyone else. They only went over to Win32 around 2001 or 2002. And that's when I left, too. (Hi, Chris! how's Cal?)

The sad state of affairs...

[__aaclcg7560]

Too often you will never have enough people to get the job done, or you will have too many people to get the job done. But you will never have the right number of people to get the job done. Everybody still expects the project to be done on time and under budget.

This is why being a project manager at any level can suck at times. What I learned over the years is either to make do with what you got or just walk away because some projects aren't worth sacrificing your time and effort.

Our Standard Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

"About half."

Think like a businessman

[Up'emInIrons]

You need to think like your managers think (I know, THE HORROR!!!). They can't *prove* any of the projected ROI numbers on any of their other projects, and you aren't expected to either.

You need to make a reasonable educated guess based on similar implementations. Talk to people who have done similar projects for similar companies and get their actual ROI numbers. Take a good look at that, then guess. That should help with the justification.

Oh, and to answer your question -- there's 1 in our company.

Re:Think like a businessman

[Anonymous Coward]

The Financial Professional Approach:

Step 1: Find any easy to find/validate numbers. (Actually, this is more like "Make sure your numbers are hard to invalidate") Costs are easy to enumerate.

Step 2: Assume the Cost of Capital. 6-8% is the typical guess. If you're at a bigger company, ask someone in the Finance dept what number they throw out.

Step 3: Make up whatever Revenue and Sales data is required to give you 2% over whatever the Cost of Capital is. Use Excel and Goalseek :) Oh, and then make it look like a round number assumption, and have an anecdote to "support" your assumption.

Step 4: Pitch the report as if you're very confident its a conservative ROI. You can usually guage hostility to your proposal before the meeting.

The point is no one ever knows what the ROIs are going to look like. If you're sure its a good idea, make up the numbers and propose it. If it turns out better, you're made. If it doesn't, they'll blame it on bad execution, not bad estimates. This is how everyone does it, sadly.

Error

[dotpavan]

Cliff, you posted here by mistake, please move it to the Poll section.

If it's not billable...

[Pi3141592]

...Then it's not a priority. Which I can understand, at a small company (such as mine) there are creditors to be paid and clients to be coddled. Who has time for non-billable hours? Our website has always been on the back burner, and has only been updated when someone (lately, me) got a wild hair on an evening/weekend.... which works out to an average of 0.00056 of a person.

Re:If it's not billable...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like where I work. We can't get our own internal (and very much critical) company programs updated because our programmers and enhancement people run on billable hours and the company itself, us, doesn't give them anything to bill.

So naturally, everything we need gets delayed and back-burnered. This leads to an endless parade of late-night phone calls, emergency fixes and "that will do for now" custom programs -or they simply leave things broken.

We recently took on a big, complex project that's turned out to be a gigantic headache that's eating tons of time. Literally all of the programmers and half the rest of our staff is involved.

This is causing a backlog across all of our other clients, forget about internal needs. Bread-and-butter clients have started bailing and they haven't landed any new clients in months.

Because of this backlog, newly hired middle management (the first against the wall when the revolution comes) recently started bringing in programming contractors from India. This has scared and angered our programming team some of whom were here before the company existed and have always been our backbone.

Or at least they used to be, before they switched to tracking billables about three years ago. Before that, we could make a phone call and instantly have three programmers looking at the problem. Not any more.

The morass is not programming's fault, it's the fault of our sales people selling a solution we didn't actually have (anything to land the major account) and the fault of Big Client for having a far more complex situation than was spec'd in their contract.

Big Client could eat us for lunch and not even notice so management is afraid they're gonna start suing us if we don't produce a magical solution soon.

The sales people who are behind this? Fired last year.

Use an iterative approach

[ddent]

Try and see how much the problem can be broken down. Chances are, it is possible for you to release more functionality over time, and get something out the door soon. There is probably something you could do that would get you ROI pretty much tomorrow.

Whats the business?

[nickgrieve]

If your site go 8 years without an update, your obviously not a tech company... it may seem like a shock to some, but not evey business has more need for a website than using it as a contact page or simple "who we are".

Who are your customers? are they interent users?

Re:Whats the business?

[bwalling]

Yeah, but why bother with important information like that? If your company sells fill dirt, there probably aren't too many people looking up your website and thinking it needs to be better. We're going to town redoing our website, but I think it's just an image thing. Our customers don't have much interest in the site, because it's not really useful to our interaction with them.

Re:Whats the business?

[Tony Hoyle]

Maybe they are.

True story: I worked for a tech company with a website created in notepad in 10 minutes because someone was bored one day. Most of the information on it was obsolete.

One day the CEO emailed excitedly to say he'd updated it... turns out he'd joined AOL and got some kind of web site design package - he'd produced a single text page with blue text on an orange background.

And spelled the name of the company wrong.

We left it a week before quietly correcting some of the more horrendous faults (it wasn't even standard HTML.. heck I'm not sure what it was to this day).

It took another 2 years before that company got somewhat of a clue... true, their new site is a Flash/ActiveX monster, but it's progress at least.

Re:Whats the business?

[LennyDotCom]

their new site is a Flash/ActiveX monster, but it's progress at least.

I think you have that backwards
Going from Flash / Active X the notepad I what I would call progress.

Re:Whats the business?

[vertinox]

Who are your customers? are they interent users?

No but their peronsal information is on the internet on public forums. Oh wait... I don't think I was supposed to disclose that.

Re:Whats the business?

[CastrTroy]

Who cares if it wasn't standard HTML when the company name wasn't even spelled right. If it was straight ascii it probably would have been better than spelling the company name wrong. And blue on orange? does this guy have no color sense?

Re:Whats the business?

[WedgeTalon]

It's not about your current customers, it's about your potential customers. If someone finds two companies online who offer nearly identical services, they will most likely go with the one that doesn't look like a fourth grader's myspace page.

1 Person

[duplicate-nickname]

Our public facing site is managed by one dedicated person (250 employees, $25 million revenue). Of course, our marketing department manages a little bit of the content (through a custom CMS) but the overall site design and management is done by one person.

Now, our intranet site(s) take the time of several IS people, but no one is dedicated full time to those services. But intranet and internet web development are two different beasts.

Re:1 Person

[duplicate-nickname]

I should add that we have 2 graphic artists who work do the graphics on the site, but they are no way dedicated to the web site (usually doing marketing materials).

Here's what my company looks like

[sco_robinso]

We are an internet company of about 30 employee's total. We publish alot of information out on the net, mainly medical (interactive demonstrations, etc). Here how it all chops down as far as the technical side goes. -2 Network Admins (1 for most server and back-end stuff, the other for desktop support and some server administration (email, etc)) -2 Graphic Designers -4 Animators (we do alot of animations and such) -2 Developers (XML and database programmers) -1 Java Programmer -2 Audio editors. Non-technical -2 Project managers -1 Senior project manager (has a bit of oversight on all projects) -1 Chief Technical officer (final say on all technical matters) -Other (accounting, CEO, reception, etc)

Re:Here's what my company looks like

[gggggggg]

opening for HTML coder in...3...2...1...
I don't know what your company looks like, but your HTML code doesn't look all that nice

Re:Here's what my company looks like

[sco_robinso]

Im not one of the html coders. Belive it or not, not everyone on this planet knows html. Im one of the network admins who does alot of server admin and desktop support (and a variety of other misc stuff).

You have four choices....

[70Bang]

1) convince your trouble maker and turn him into an ally and use him as a buffer against those above him.

2) convince those above him what's right|wrong and leave your immediate troublemaker in the cold.

3) continue to bang your head against the the wall until you reach brain or they send you out the door with a patch of skull missing.

4) You realize this is an intractable situation and high-tail it out of there while you still have the ability to do so on your own terms.

There are subtle nuances, but unless you are adept at pulling a rabbit out of the hat, I'd vote for #4, regardless of how long you've been there. People understand bailing out of failing situations.

Re:You have four choices....

[corbettw]

There are subtle nuances, but unless you are adept at pulling a rabbit out of the hat, I'd vote for #4, regardless of how long you've been there. People understand bailing out of failing situations.

I'm constantly amazed by the tendancy of Slashdotters to just cut and run in the face of adversity. Quiting one job just because you don't get along with every single person in the organization is not a winning strategy cause, guess what?, you're not always going to get along with everyone. Try to be positive and find ways to work with the situation, not against it.

Options #1 and #2 are the only really viable solutions to this mess. And be sure to try them in that order. Either the road block gets on board, or you go around the road block. Now, the question is, how do you accomplish #1?

Someone else mentioned pulling him into meetings so he can get an education on what's involved. That might help, but first you have to determine, why is this guy causing problems in the first place? If he doesn't see the need for a website in the first place, then pulling him into meetings showing how hard it is to do right is only going to give him more ammunition. If he's just trying to be contrary, then you'll never get anywhere and you should just pretend he doesn't exist to the extent you can. Also, there's no clue given as to what this guy's position is. And not just his title, but is he the CEO's college roommate or has he been there so long everyone just defers to him?

Before moving any further in the project, you may have to have an outside "efficiency consultant" (and I don't mean the Bobs) come in and help explain what a website can do for your company. Make it as flashy a presentation as possible, and only invite managers who control the purse strings. Once they're on board, everything else will fall in place.

The fact that a manager is asking this is a little troubling. Dude, seriously, you need to go read some books on how to manage projects and people, and probably attend some self-improvement and/or sales seminars. You'd be surprised what you can learn about human nature at those things.

Re:You have four choices....

[Fulcrum of Evil]

I'm constantly amazed by the tendancy of Slashdotters to just cut and run in the face of adversity. Quiting one job just because you don't get along with every single person in the organization is not a winning strategy cause, guess what?, you're not always going to get along with everyone. Try to be positive and find ways to work with the situation, not against it.

There's a difference between not getting along with anyone and not being able to perform your job function because people refuse to help you (for whatever reason). If you're in an intractable position, then yes, it's a good idea to cut and run.

Re:You have four choices....

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't advocate bolting the door. I merely listed them as options. I've been doing this since high school - a little over twenty-five years. I'm not claiming to have the end-all be-all answer person, but I've seen a lot of people in a lot of environments who have made each of those choices.

When I'm asked if I have questions, I do have questions. One is, "Whats the most common reason people leave this firm?" If they reply, "No one has left - we're just so great non one feels the need to leave." the hair on the back of my hair stands up a bit." Smaller or startups: "re: CTOs or CIOs -- how were they determined? Was it because they were hear either as one of the original partners or joined immediately after and grabbed one of those titles because they were available?"

Beautiful, beautiful bureaucracy

[TubeSteak]

Everyone should know that it's the mid-level managers & secretaries who run the show. Secretaries can block your access to the decision makers & middle managers can block your access to resources once a decision has been made.

So... it's entirely irrelevant if the upper-level managers approve something, because they aren't the ones implementing it. If the middle managers aren't on board, you might as well kiss your project goodbye. You either need to convince him directly (kiss ass) or have his boss(es) apply some pressure.

An option of last resort is to take an end-run around this guy and hire a consultant. Sometimes people will listen to advice if they know they're paying for it.

Re:Beautiful, beautiful bureaucracy

[MudButt]

An option of last resort is to take an end-run around this guy and hire a consultant. Sometimes people will listen to advice if they know they're paying for it.

In my experience (unfortunately) this is the best option. It's kind of like fighting fire with fire... Except you're fighting ignorance with ignorance.

At my previous work place, it took a team of IBM security consultants (at an unholy hourly rate), to convince our (mis)director of IT that it was actually a *bad* idea to dispense VPN client software installation packages from an anonymous FTP server. The consultants 0wn3ed our production systems in about an hour...

Matrix owns you...

[Anonymous Coward]

..welcome the REAL world.

How about a Demo?

[saden1]

Maybe it is time to give them a demo. Not necessarily a functioning demo, mock-up screens will do. You'll give them an idea of what exactly you're trying to do and if they think you're on the right track you'll get more funding for new hires.

Re:How about a Demo?

[Spaceman40]

If the middle-manager isn't supporting the project because he/she doesn't know why the company needs it, a demo might be a good idea.

If said manager isn't supporting it because he/she thinks they're taking too long, a demo might make him/her think they're already done with the project, and in a couple of days it should be up.

Re:How about a Demo?

[CastrTroy]

Make it a powerpoint presentation. Anything more will make them think it's closer to being done than it actually is. If they see something in a web browser that looks like the final product, even if it's just 10 static pages will make them ask why it isn't live already. It sounds like the managers don't understand the technology, and wouldn't understand the meaning of prototype.

Re:How about a Demo?

[70Bang]

And to both (immediate) parents...

"...and how much time away from official projects did you use to create this?"

(fyi: I've always heard of "side projects" as "desk drawer" projects. I walked into a primarily mainframe site but one of the largest backbone sites in the state (mid 80s). I had the phone number of my predecessor and took calls for things she'd been working on. Someone in another "area" (we supported special projects for the state, city, med school, research med, dentistry school, a nursing school, faculty, staff, and students, and a few other areas I'm forgetting. Most was for academics, so no systems changes could made and life was "quieter". One of our "users" called and wanted some updates want to be made to their [software] system. I was obviously in the dark and went to the boss, who also knew noting about it

It turned out there was a 10'000+ line SAS project and it'd been in and out of the desk drawer for a substantial period of time. Fortunately, it wasn't my job to tell these folks they'd been taken down the primrose pack and they'd have to get in line like everyone else. Fortunately, that beat the witch hunts we experienced when problems occurred.

Re:How about a Demo?

[typidemon]

Power point is pretty limp. Try paper and wireframe designs.

This is not a DIY project

[winkydink]

Especially for a large company. I'll bet you don't develop your own advertising, you don't do your branding and identity development internally. Why on earth would you tackle this internally? Do you have a Marcomm Agency Of Record? If not talk to your advertising AOR and ask them for help. Really, this isn't a DIY project.

Triply so if it's been 8 years.

Just enough

[Doctor Memory]

At the last job I had where we did comperable work, we had three developers, one web designer (shared among other projects), and two content providers. We cranked out a web app with forty-some forms, linked to two databases (MySQL and Oracle), serving some 2500 users. A hundred thousand lines or so of PHP, whipped up from scratch in just over two months. It seriously sucked to be on the project, but it was a pretty successful rollout.

Internet Department?

[UtSupra]

I am the Internet Department!

Hey, I'm no good at my job either

[Anonymous Coward]

Should I ask slashdot for help?

I'll wager that you are over-engineering, KISS.

WorkinTooHard???

[Anonymous Coward]

WorkinTooHard?? Is that you Steve? I thought you told me in our status meeting last week that your were understaffed? Now I see you have time to post on Slashdot. No wonder the new website is taking too long. Get back to work!

ROI? That's impossible...

[MudButt]

I'd be a little worried if I were asked to show the ROI of any web site that wasn't specifically for an on-line retailer. How did you show the ROI on a large, wooden, hand carved sign in the 1600's?

A web site (as simple or complex as it may be) is a marketing tool for a business. And anyone with an MBA or equivalent experience will tell you that developing an ROI on a marketing campaign is nearly impossible, at best.

As for "how many" developers it's going to take... Check out today's story, 60% Of Windows Vista Code To Be Rewritten, which has some great advice about how to get 9 women pregnant and have a baby in 1 month. (Or was that "getting 5 Jazz players pregnant"? I don't remember...)

burn out.

[brevig907]

I work for a retail electronics company that has 32 stores accross muliple states in the US. I'm the only App and Web(intranet -php/mysql / internet -jsp/Oracle) developer, one of two DBA's, one of two business analysts for my department, only technical point on contact for department, and basic bitch.

currently I'm creating a custom ticketing system for our call center, I've been given 10 days, to design, develop and roll out the application. Needless to say some of what I have to do is hacked together.

and now all of my complaining leads on a question.

What do you do when you feel burnt out at work?

Personally, I've started drinking during lunch, not the best thing, but it seems to help.

Re:burn out.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's time to switch jobs -- I've been in your shoes. No company is worth the destruction of your health or sanity.

I also can't help but observe that it seems pointless to require a custom system when there are already many existing call-center automation packages available. Frankly, I'd tell the company that without any extra help or schedule, they won't get anything but a lightly-modified version of an existing system. Something that works and does 80% of the job is a lot better than an untested system with 100% of the desired features.

I have no idea what your requirements are, but I've looked at stuff like openCRM that seemed reasonable.

Hope this helps -- good luck!

Re:burn out.

[MudButt]

I'm the only App and Web(intranet -php/mysql / internet -jsp/Oracle) developer

If you're already running php/mysql, surely you can take something from SourceForge as a fully functional solution!

Re:burn out.

[brevig907]

We currently use Oracle Application for our call center, but out model is about to change and we're dropping the software.

So I started to prepair Remedy for our Agents since that's what our help desk uses and we own it. But our CIO, Director and Manager thought that it would be better to build something custom.

It's not something i can't push off either since our business model must change on the 31st.

I've been thinking about free lance work again and going back to school. I was in better health and much more relaxed when i did that few years ago.

Re:burn out.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

What do you do when you feel burnt out at work?

Personally, I've started drinking during lunch, not the best thing, but it seems to help.

Start hiring hookers during lunch with petty cash instead. Getting your pipes cleaned will make you a lot more productive that afternoon than getting drunk.

Re:burn out.

[typidemon]

You need to stop drinking during lunch and search for a new job during lunch.

Re:burn out.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear that. Top ten (a few billion a year) health care company and I'm the only web person. Middle management makes technical decisions like "Lets use the color orange for our back-end systems". I've started editing Wikipedia articles and drinking to cope.

Re:burn out.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have seen Remedy - you alone will never come close, not in 10 years.

Look your boss in the eye and tell them they are deluted.

Re:burn out.

[zootread]

Start hiring hookers during lunch with petty cash instead. Getting your pipes cleaned will make you a lot more productive that afternoon than getting drunk.

You'd think that. I get my girlfriend to suck me off during lunch time (my apartment is close to the area we work in), but it just makes me want to take a nap. Helps with stress, though.

Re:burn out.

[Monkelectric]

What do you do when you feel burnt out at work?

Having sex with a teenager does wonders for me :)

Re:burn out.

[soxos]

Check out http://cerberusweb.com/. We used it as ticketing system at a former company.

it ...

• was able to get it up and running in the few days you have
• was flexible enough to cover most of our demands (escalation, resolution times, email integration, etc)
• was pretty cheap (
• had an active/responsive development staff

(standard disclaimer: I do not work for the company that produces this product or have any affiliation with them other than as a satisfied former user)

Reply

[pkulak]

I'm for a set of 4 companies who all together employ about 100 people. Each company has a website. I do the web-programming, one other does the design, and another assists.

lone wolf at my state agency

[SethJohnson]

I'm the lone developer in my state agency's "website department". We have over 250 employees and huge information publishing needs. Like the submitter, we are in the midst of a website redesign using a commercial CMS. A county spent 6 months with a staff of four programmers to build their site with the newer version of this software. I was asked to do it in 3 months by myself. I'm spending entire weekends and nights in my cubicle coding this thing in JSP. No overtime pay. It's a month past deadline and if I don't finish it by the end of next week, I'm fired.

Morale to this story: working for the government sucks as much as people say it does.

Seth

Re:lone wolf at my state agency

[sammy baby]

Oh, man. I feel your pain.

(I used to work for a state university. Academia can be as bad as working for the state, especially when your university is run by the state. Worst of both worlds.)

If I were you, I'd throw together a couple of mockups and spend the rest of the time interviewing.

Re:lone wolf at my state agency

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel your pain.

I work for a large industry trade association. There are 5 major websites plus a dozen or so ancilliary sites. I am the only employee who can do anything more than Html. And there is one other person who can do Html without dreamweaver. We also have a half-dozen or so outside vendors and service providers involved, all of whom I need to check behind because contractors are always trying to pull fast ones and I have exceedingly high standards.

In any case, to answer the OPs question, we have actually about cubed the "webby" staff in the last year or so. Of course, none of them can do anything but put things in a cms or design some WHYSIWIG nightmare with dreamweaver.

Re:lone wolf at my state agency

[Tim C]

I know it's easy to say when you have the luxury of not being in that position, but seriously, tell them to shove their job. They're asking for the impossible and not even paying you for attempting it.

Life's too short, and no job is worth that.

Re:lone wolf at my state agency

[rewinn]

> It's a month past deadline and if I don't finish it by the end of next week, I'm fired

I'm sorry to say that you should spend the next week sending out resumes instead of putting in unpaid overtime.

An organization that abuses you that badly today will do it again tomorrow. Try to get a gig where they abuse you only during regular work hours.

If you have moral objections to that recommendation (after all, when I was in the same position as you, I ignored the same advice...), you should focus your efforts at getting the website to the point where it's a good example of your work, so when you start job hunting in 7+1 days, future employers will be impressed.

Re:lone wolf at my state agency

[GWBasic]

Most of your replies were rather, uhm, sympathetic.

Perhaps it's your mistake for letting your superiors think that you could do in 3 months what took 4 people 6 months? Either way, it's a good learning experience of not overpromising and/or identifying bad managers.

Re:lone wolf at my state agency

[corbettw]

A county spent 6 months with a staff of four programmers to build their site with the newer version of this software. I was asked to do it in 3 months by myself...It's a month past deadline and if I don't finish it by the end of next week, I'm fired.

I call bullshit. It's incredibly difficult to fire state employees, and given that there's documented evidence of a similar organization taking 8 times the resources to complete the same project, there's no way you can get fired for this from a large corporation, let alone the state.

If your manager has literally threatened you with termination over this, stop working on the project and go directly to your HR department, do not pass GO. Tell them about your stress (it helps if you have a doctor's note or, even better, a note from Epstein's muttah, stating that you're under immense stress and borderline to a breakdown) and make sure they know you've been threatened with termination for not doing what four people couldn't. You'll be surprised at how fast they move to make sure you're taken care of.

Re:lone wolf at my state agency

[Fulcrum of Evil]

I'm sorry to say that you should spend the next week sending out resumes instead of putting in unpaid overtime.

Seconded. Also, stop working overtime - you want to be fresh for your interviews. If it were me (and I'm an evil bastard), I'd take longer lunches away from the crowd so they think I'm interviewing. Even better if I am.

Re:lone wolf at my state agency

[consorting-with-daem]

I call bullshit. It's incredibly difficult to fire state employees

I call bullshit. It may be difficult to fire a state employee, but quite easy to run one off. Speaking as a state employee myself, I can advise that sub-stations can do whatever they want as middle management without interference from state level personnel. Especially in IT; your job is the impossible. Your PD/job-description is so god-like you cannot even use it in your resume ... no one would believe it ... HR is helpless as they could not perform a desk audit even if they wanted to (or, knew how).

I concur, threat of termination is more than my experience can verify, but a) I don't disbelieve it and b) I've heard myself the threat that "future employers will call."

Actually, future employers won't call, as they are well aware no state paper pusher knows anything worth listening to. But, nonetheless ...

l8r
consorting-with-daem[ons]

Re:lone wolf at my state agency

[SethJohnson]

I appreciate your comments and believe me, I've been strongly considering these options. I'm sticking it out, though, because I want this on my resume. After it's live, I'm outta here.

Seth

Re:lone wolf at my state agency

[Anonymous Coward]

I call bullshit. It's incredibly difficult to fire state employees.

I call bullshit. It may be difficult to fire a state employee, but quite easy to run one off.

I call bullshit. It is amazingly difficult to find a state employee, let alone wake one up before quitting time. Regulations clearly state you can't fire a state employee after hours, nor can you fire an unconscious one. A state employee running is unimaginable.

Re:lone wolf at my state agency

[singleantler]

Quite bluntly: you're all ready a sucker if you're thinking that way. You'll do much better in your future jobs if you learn how to say, politely, firmly and in calm way "That's not a possible time frame, we need to investigate the project further before we can judge how long it will take."

Take a day off, get some perspective. If it's all ready a month late, it won't really matter if it's not done on Friday. Managers who expect you to work extra hours in the day and the weekend for free don't deserve your respect, especially if they're not in the seat next to you doing exactly the same thing.

Maybe this is some bitterness coming out as I was made redundant from a company that I'd put a lot of energy in to, mainly due to poor management of the sales function. But really, looking back at late projects, when it comes right down to it an extra week or two really doesn't make any difference.

Given a 90% complete project it's very unlikely management will get rid of the person writing it when they'll have a further delay getting someone new in to pick it all up. The extra pressure and stupid deadline is just manipulation of the way you feel to try to guilt you in to working faster, even though that's likely to produce a worse product.

0.5

[EvilTwinSkippy]

We have 2 developers put in about a 25% of their time, when not otherwise nursing ailing network switches or coddling servers.

Granted, that's just for our in-house apps.

Our public website has, and I kid ye not, an entire department with a director. As well they should, because it's a million hit a day website. It helps to be a grant funded non-profit in that regard.

Marketing

[Xibby]

Everyone in our marketing department thinks that they are in the internet department. They all are convinced that a flash based web site with siny bells and whistles is the way to go.

Fortunatly, what Marketing thing and what is actually happening is two different things. Content and functionality are being pushed over flash (both the Macromedia flash and general website bling.)

We've out sorced the web development to a sister company in our orginization which happens to do web services. In house the ITS Manager, Marketing Manager, and VP of Sales collobrate with the web dev team to get results. The yuppies who want flash and bling don't have much to contribute other than flash and bling, and few of their ideas made it to the final project.

Overall, about 10 people. :)

Plans and schedules

[Anonymous Coward]

everyone is asking why it takes so long to complete, and almost daily I have to explain that I do not have enough manpower

If what you say is true, then it sounds like you don't have a plan and a schedule to execute that plan. The two combined should explicitly spell out how many people you need and how much effort is required. If you are short on resources, you should be able to point to the schedule and say "see these tasks, they could be done in parallel but can't due to lack of resources, and here is how much additional time this is costing". I know many developers view things like plans and schedules as "overhead", but once you get into the real world, they matter.

Of course, I can't prove ROI until the new site is launched (a great Catch22).

If you can't provide them with a general idea of what the roi for this investment is, then they shouldn't have let you start the project to begin with. What was the pitch, "our site is too old school, we need to spruce it up"? Was the idea to actually gain customers? Was it to drive additional revenue? Was it to simply not look so old fashion with the blinking text? This should have been thought about up front to both determine whether the project got the green light, and if so, what the scope of the changes are.

It sounds like to a degree, many of your problems were self created. If someone wants to spend your money, you want to know what is in it for you and how you benefit. It's no surprise then that when it's someone elses money, they expect similarly.

Classic Blunder

[Jason Earl]

It sounds like you have made the classic mistake of ripping out and replacing something that worked simply because you wanted to do something better. That's almost always a bad idea without buy in from the highest levels.

Sure, the old site is crufty, but it is paid for, and the stuff you are doing is not. If you don't have the political pull to spend money at will it is almost a better plan to find minor changes that can be done inexpensively but that yield proportionally large benefits. Once you have a few visible "successes" under your belt then you can start trying to change the world. Until then, promising the moon without being able to deliver is simply a full-proof way to fail. If you have undertaken a project that you can not complete with your current staff and management is starting to question the viability of your project then you probably had better start thinking about plan B. Plan B probably should not include "industry statistics."

Seriously, you need to deliver something. Not complain about needing more help.

Re:Classic Blunder

[Jerf]

Which triggers this idea in my head, which is probably how I'd approach the problem. (This message is addressed to WorkinTooHard, not Jason Earl.)

Since you don't think that the management is committing anywhere near the necessary resources to this project, suggest shutting it down. The worst case scenario is to fritter away resources that could be better spent doing something useful and yet never having anything to show for it.

If they agree, there you go, problem solved. Seriously.

If they don't agree, take the opportunity to see what they want out of the website. You ought to already know, but if you don't, find out. Then, when you have a list of concrete needs, show why you can't attain them on your resources. Then, either revise the list or get more resources, and point out there's no third option in the real world.

Of course the second bit is standard requirements gathering methodology, but by opening by suggesting just canning the project you might shake things up enough to swing a transition into that domain.

You need to draw a contrast between what is desired and what you can produce. It's your responsibility to know both, and while you don't mention it, I'm going to hazard a guess you don't really have good, solid requirements, because that's the easiest way to get to where you are now.

The reality is, if an upper manager wants to block the new website, they have every right to do so. Your job is to go from an implicit "we don't want a new website" (as demonstrated by actions) to an explicit "we don't want a new website", so the "blame" can't be shifted to you.

Re:Classic Blunder

[zissou]

In his defense, that's the least known classic blunder, behind:

1. Never getting involved in a land war in Asia.

And

2. Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

Re:Classic Blunder

[AutopsyReport]

Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.

Re:Classic Blunder

[Jason Earl]

I needed that, thanks.

Re:Classic Blunder

[JollyFinn]

2. Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

Yeah. The world would be so much better place if people would have learned that long time ago.

You're thinking like a manager

[Anonymous Coward]

"How many full-time web-application developers, content providers, analytics people, UI designers, email marketing people, and so forth"

You're thinking too much like a management droid and not enough like a real techie.
Chances are good that you can get 1-3 people to do all of this.
Hell, I wrote my company's internet and intranet site myself from the ground up. All it took to get management on-board was a competent demo. Once they had a chance to see what direction I was going in, they were able to make suggestions and changes on paper and I was able to go from there.

Whatever you do, don't expect to get full support unless you have some sort of a demo ready. These people want to see something with their own eyes that they can look at and interact with. They need to know that you can do this.

Just The One...

[CowboyBob500]

...and it shows...

Bob

incremental change

[bfields]

We are in the middle of a major website redesign (the current site has not been updated in over 8 years) and everyone is asking why it takes so long to complete, and almost daily I have to explain that I do not have enough manpower. Of course, I can't prove ROI until the new site is launched (a great Catch22).

Sounds like reason #65536 to never launch a "major redesign" of anything....

Isn't there some way this could be broken down into steps that could show actual day-to-day improvements (even if only very minor ones?)?

Re:incremental change

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like reason #65536 to never launch a "major redesign" of anything....

Y'know, Excel isn't the best program to use to make lists...

Re:incremental change

[GrEp]

I agree. Start by standardizing the look/feel of the website with CSS. Just doing this step is all that is required if what you need is a "facelift" and not an actual "content" update.

As part of the previous step eleminate duplicated stuff and put it in a single location.

Now that you have a clean looking version of the old site that is easier to maintain figure out step by step what needs to be added. For each task give a list of options to management along with a timeline as to how long each solution will take. If management sees constant improvement, and is informed on the time it takes to complete each task they should be pacified.

The thing that sucks about being in IT is that many times you have to be our own management, seperating concerns into small tasks. Good luck.

I don't care who does what with who.

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as they make a backup copy, I'm fine with it.

Snotty Scotty

[Anonymous Coward]

How many email marketers do we use?
Just one, but he the job done and then some - you may have heard of him, his name is Scot Richter.

Just little ole me...

[codepunk]

8 international and multilingual business domains, 3 full intranets and all web applications hosted on two redhat clusters, postgresql and mysql backends and we have a grand total of 1 "Me, Myself and I", development and administration. If you are having that much trouble doing a site update you did not write it correctly to begin with. I can update the site look and feel for one of our domains in a hour. It is a little bit of a juggling act sometimes but get everything done somehow.

Re:Just little ole me...

[isometrick]

Yeah, I could also update the look and feel of codepunk.com in an hour. One css "font-family" and still some time for Doom 3.

Re:Just little ole me...

[rk]

"Two years ago, I took the job of Internet Marketing Manager"

"the current site has not been updated in over 8 years"

We could debate the state of the art in web site development 8 years ago and ask whether or not your system is similarly aged, but I think it is fairly clear from the context above that saying "you did not write it correctly" is perhaps a bit unfair.

ABSOLUTLY FARKING NO ONE

[834r9394557r011]

The company I work for is retarded. We have maybe one person who edits the site, if that i think perhaps we outsource that but i don't know, we have a whole of 3 people in IT that to IT work, and maybe 5 that are working on some unknown project that was supposed to be doe years ago, but that still sux and is probably going to drop productivity. That's what happens when your company uses a buisness model from 1920. I still don't think our website is up to date nor will it be. Aside from the fact we have no internal database or website for inter-company communique or customer tracking, it's all ".doc" or ".xls" crap. and thyey don't use the appropriat software for the appropriat task. Lifes a B.

you're woefully understaffed

[DinkyDoorknob]

This does sound like a plea for help as much as anything, but gathering information is your first step in fixing a situation.

Here are some comparisons from my recent past. Currently, I'm the only tech guy, and I do everything. But that's because I just left my last job to found a start up :-)

Prior to that, I was one of three developers in a department that also had a designer, a writer, and a project manager. That was to service an organization of ~1,100 people. Some departments also had their own techish people who'd do departmental sites and the like. We did no ecommerce at all nor any desktop support, just interweb stuff (we wrote and maintained a fairly sophisticated Struts-based CMS system), and we were stretched way thin -- there was a greater demand for our services than we could reasonably comply with. We were also a non-profit, which meant more people wasn't a realistic option.

Before that I worked for a company with ~30,000 employees worldwide, and while I was there we were just rolling out ecommerce. We had three dedicated developers, a DBA, a network guy, two support people (just for the web site, they didn't do desktops) and two managers. That was some years ago, I believe they've grown since then. This was mostly to maintain a site -- the design and development of it has initially been outsourced. This felt like reasonable manpower, but again, we were doing incremental change on a project that had been built by a larger team. And the pace was, shall we say, bureaucratic.

It's possible to educate managers about what resources are required for a given volume of work, but you'll have to communicate well and be direct when you know you're right. Good luck.

Duh.

[mustafap]

>and everyone is asking why it takes so long to complete, and almost daily I have to explain that I do not have enough manpower

Just tell them to f**k off. You only report to one person. Worry about what they think.

Road Block

[Nom du Keyboard]

I didn't expect a (respected) mid-level manager to be the road block.

A mid-level manager has a lot of people above him. When are you ready to go to his boss and point out that this person is preventing you from getting your job done?

Wiresquire's law:

[wiresquire]

Wiresquire's law:If you are asked more than 3 times about the same thing, you should have already told them about it

It's an indicator that there may be cultural change management issues and/or you haven't sold people on an idea/project.

In your case it may not harm to do a little status to let people know where you are. You do have a project plan, and are tracking towards completion, right?

If you are so understaffed, it should have been apparent at the start of the project. And the time for the project to be completed should be known.

I get the impression you're missing something, but it's hard to nail based on the info above.

ws

Staffing Shortages

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for the Virginia Department of Correctional Education (www.dce.virginia.gov)

I am the Webmaster, and one of two software developers. I am also one of two (the same two) DBAs. I am the Helpdesk, as well as dabbling a bit in network support. We only have 4 IS employees in our main office...and 5 field techs to cover the entire state prison education system (35 sites or so).

I also own a software development company with 3 employees so I know what it is to be short staffed.

Chris

We are

[John Napkintosh]

20 strong, including our system administration team and two people who have security titles who are mostly just developers. This is up from three workers - one manager, one developer, and one "content producer" (essentially a less senior developer who gets paid less) - less than four years ago.

hmm...that's a tough one...

[MorderVonAllem]

4, only 2 of which actually program. 1 Manager and 1 IT Admin. We are also one of the largest background screening companies on the west coast. All of our software has been designed in house and in .NET. And we both visit slashdot more than we program. Yet we still get shitloads done...but we don't get paid enough.

Backwards

[jamesl]

Either you or the company have this process backwards. The company needs to decide why they have a web presence and what they want to accomplish. For example:

We will book $XX sales this year through our website.
We will generate XX,XXX new leads through out website.
We will eliminate XX positions in Human Resources by providing information to our employees.
We will increase stockholder satisfaction with our shareholder communications through improvement of our website.

If you were an architect and the company hired you to add 15,000 square feet of office space and a new manufacturing facility, you wouldn't have to perform a ROI before starting. That would have been done before you were hired and given a budget.

My Company

[therage96]

Where I work, we have 3 people (1 designer, 1 designer/programmer, and 1 programmer), and we manage over 50+ websites. Sometimes it gets a bit tough, especially when we have multiple sites requesting re-designs, but corporate just refuses to believe internet is where its at. Its sad too, because if they would just hire maybe 3 more people, we could easily double or triple our current internet profits within 1 year. However, corporate is old-fashioned, so I doubt that will ever be happening anytime soon.

Totally Dependant

[Panaflex]

I've been involved with web development since 1996. I've worked at a half dozen small, medium and large web sites.

Basically, it comes down to:
1. Understanding of the final product or content
2. How much you interconnect with backend data providers, and if you require filtering.
3. Your team's experience in the language and dev environment
4. The speed at which those languages lend towards the final development.

Note about languages -
My experience is that Java is by FAR a slower dev environment than PHP, Perl or Ruby. The whole compile cycle and the complexities of app servers make for a much more complicated project. The exception to this is JSP - which comes closer to Perl - but entails it's own complexities in getting at databases, etc... Plus, java makes no wins in uptime, speed, or clustering compared to Perl (utilizing mod-perl), or PHP.

Yes, I have been on the large person java team that architected the connections between the three largest online travel providers - don't whine at me.

Re:Totally Dependant

[KingPrad]

I concur. I use Java at work and for the most part I like it. But the development time for any app is several times longer than it would take in a scripting language. Any of your choice of PHP, Perl, Ruby, or Python will give you much faster development and a more nimble codebase for future changes.

Re:Totally Dependant

[the eric conspiracy]

One of the things to remember is that on any substantial software project coding represents only about 20% of the overall effort. Gathering requirements, design, coding, testing and documentation all require time. So you might be able to write something in PHP quickly, but by the time you go through the whole cycle that PHP code starts to look like a poor bargain.

Re:Totally Dependant

[Panaflex]

Well, YES and NO.

IFF your writing something you know will generally not change functionslity then Java is the way to go. The problem is that web sites tend to change rapidly according to marketing demands. In the end, you get about the same quality of code. It's just fancier spaghetti code!

I really believe that java is great for middle tier apps and business apps. I would MUCH rather develop the front end in something lightweight and fast though. Besides, in the end, if you have to throw it away at least you're not going to cry over it!

bids

[Anonymous Coward]

Get bids from private companies to do the same thing. Compare costs... 1) Stop complaining or 2) Show management.

Give Up

[Threni]

Your companies website obviously isn't very important to their business. Perhaps they generate sales through other methods, and people can find your phone number of the relevant email addresses without too much difficulty.

One...me

[Foofoobar]

I built an MVC framework in under a month and copied over all the procedural code into OOP code.

If you have a GOOD developer, good organization and all the content pregenerated... 1-3 months should be all thats needed (even for an enterprise company).

The exception would be a complete re-org, business redesign as well but again, with good organization and a good framework, it should be very straight forward.

Is hiring the answer?

[The-Bus]

Hiring may not necessarily be the answer. You need manpower, but once the site is up-and-running, you may not need as many people onboard. Could you accomplish the same goals by maybe hiring another key person but getting contractors for the rest of the work? Or maybe hiring someone (or some company) to oversee certain aspects of the site temporarily?

For example, a programmer or designer is pretty flexible. After the site is done they could work on other projects, update manuals, internal programs, media kits, etc. But what would, for example, a UI designer do? I'd also shy away from having an "email marketing manager" because almost all the professional marketing emails I get are usually handled by a company that's not the one advertising everything.

Of course, a couple of things need to be noted. First off, if they have not updated their site in 8 years and the internet is vital, how come they are still in business? Who are some competitors with a terrific web presence and how has that affected their business? I've seen plenty of cases where a very high investment has not really resulted in any new business. Or, the new business can't be tied to the site, eventhough the site is generating new business. (Build this into your proposal so if there's an increase, it can be directly attributed to the project you spearheaded!)

I have a friend who is a procurement specialist for a pretty big consultancy, with clients being a lot of Fortune 500 companies. Anytime he needs to compare commoditized products or services (say, plastic sheeting, wires) he always has a very big list of companies to contact. The easiest way he cuts that down from 100 companies to 30 or 40 is by eliminating ones with bad or non-existent websites. To an extent, it is a reflection of the professionalism and thoroughness of any company.

That being said, if your employer is afraid of new ideas, doesn't want to understand them, and doesn't see the benefit if a clear, realistic plan to great ROI is laid out in front of them, that company is a sinking ship. It that's the case, it wouldn't hurt to take your good idea and see if a competitor will do it instead (with you overseeing the project at a vastly higher salary, of course).

Too easy!

[Anonymous Coward]

About half!

Old joke, but someone had to say it!

WorkinTooHard - Not half

[Ash Vince]

2 Internet Techies? Return On Investment? What investment?

Maybe you should advise they give up on having an in house internet presence and outsource the lot.
I would recommend you try and find a local specialist web hosting and development company and start asking for a Content Management System customised to your business needs. This will enable someone of a non technological background to change the websites content while still making sure it is constrained to a specified look and feel.

You mention in your post that your company sells products, do they currently sell any online? If so then you should be able to convince higher management of the benefit of an internet presence fairly easily, if not then try and add a form to email facilty to your current site and allow prospective customers to post enquiries. Make sure that you or someone on side with you get the job of filtering these enquiries so management dont get to see the crap.

If you really do work for a business which would benefit from selling online then alot of the emails you recieve through this form will hopefully be requests from potential customers asking why they cannot buy online. These will do the best job of convincing managers of the benefits of an online portal.

Even if the business you work for may not be right for an straight forward ecommerce solution, the value of leads you may be able to generate through such a facilty may help in the long run. Even if this doesnt help, forms to email are cheap so your expenditure was very low.

If your existing site that has been up for 8 years hasn't been changed or looked at internally because it gets no traffic then try and look at why. Maybe you need to advertise that you actually have one to your customers / potential customers.

Even if you company doesn't want the risks associated with online retailing, try having a site which lists all your products in an attractive format and then lets potential customers email the sales dept regarding the product they are interested through a form to email facilty as described above.

Hope this helps but it's hard to provide more help without more info on what your business is.

Website ROI == Death

[bgardella]

I once worked at a major toy company where part of its mission was to make "internet enabled toys". This meant that millions went into the "internet dept". That changed overnight. Suddenly every dept had to justify its existence with things like ROI. Unless the company you work for has a concrete strategy at its core to make money using the internet, you are on the losing side of an MBA-fueled battle. The poster should probably look to managing in another dept or a new company altogether.

--b

Somebody else said it...

[IANAAC]

Freelance. I ended up going freelance, albeit in a different industry, and I've never been happier or felt more accomplished.

You'll find a lot more of your time is spent marketing yourself (about 40%, in my case), but that has been a good learning experience for me, and thus, feel like I've moved forward.

And you'll also find yourself having to chase down payments occasionally. That's probably the only real downside of it. It's not pleasant.

Take a look at Pragmatech's Web Publisher

[GWBasic]

Take a look at Pragmatech's Web Publisher. (www.pragmatech.com) It's supposed to allow you to generate a web site from the same documents that your company's marketing people are cut & pasting from when a sales request comes in. If you can sell your marketing department on automated RFP generation, managing your web site could easily be a two-person tool.

(Disclaimer: I used to work for Pragmatech)

Who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck corporations. Fuck worrying about how well they do or whether they succeed. Take whatever money they will give you and do the absolute least amount of work possible without getting fired. Go home after work (or better yet, during work) and make your own website(s)/money. You think their going to lose any sleep when you get a notice that your job has now been outsourced and a couple security guards escort you out of the building like your a common criminal? You are just a number with a dollar sign next to it.

If your any good at making websites than you should be able to do it without being tethered to a corporation. If your not, then suck it up and accept the fact that your another cog in the machine that will be discarded when it is no longer found necessary.

I'm suspicious... (or, paranoid?)

[davidsyes]

"How many people do you have working in/on your company's Internet/Intranet and Extranet sites and applications? How many full-time web-application developers, content providers, analytics people, UI designers, email marketing people, and so forth?"

Every time I see something like the text quoted, (and this is the 3rd time in about as many weeks that I've seen such questions here -- not to attack the Slash Staff, btw...) I feel like it's a probe question. I wonder if it's well-crafted and paid for so that the readers get all riled up and reply. Like the people with nicknames, but personal web pages. You then go on to say how many MySQL devs, and so on you have, trying to help out this guy. For all you know, it could be post-worthy by Slashdot staff standards, but the poster or piece-writer could be looking for sales avenues leading to sales revenues.

Some of you guys out to be wary of being "taggable" while disclosing what products you use. You never know: that could be Oracle or ms digging for treasure. If your company is susceptible to discounts and promises of upgrades and marketing dollars, YOU could be out of a job if they replace YOUR tool of choice...

Just some thoughts...

Re:I'm suspicious... (or, paranoid?)

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

Well with the ridiculously small amount of information here how the heck could we size this? Is this an international company that sells carborundum or do the sell circuit boards? The answers to these matter.

Re:I'm suspicious... (or, paranoid?)

[WorkinTooHard]

Funny you should ask - One of our product lines includes circuit boards including backplanes

Government of Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked for the Government of Canada for one year, and we got twelve people in our Internet group... well, effectively we got three people since we're two non-Quebecers plus ten Quebecers. The Quebecers work 10 percent of the time and try to look good the rest of the time.

Sure, mark me Flamebait, but this is Canadian tax money at work.

Re:ROI? That's impossible...

[Anonymous Coward]

well... you just use AJAX! a large wooden sign with AJAX would have to work!

Snoogins

[PunkFloyd]

What the fuck is the Internet?

my company

[funkpucker]

In my company I am expected to be the jack-of-all-trades. I am the system administrator, consultant, website designer, vba programmer, database administrator, network engineer, and manage and negotiate with 3rd party technology subcontractors. I do all of this for a company of about 30. We have approx. 1.5 million in sales.

The Company Store

[Snowy_Duck]

I work in a call center which deals with stores like thecompanystore.com and domestications.com and in terms of actual people sitting there processing order from online we have about 4 at any given time. In terms of making the websites i'd assume no more then 15.

Don't do ROI.

[Sigma 7]

Of course, I can't prove ROI until the new site is launched (a great Catch22).

The trick is not to do ROI - instead you do risk analysis of not undertaking the project.

You mention that the current site is 8 years out of date. In your risk analysis, state that prospective clients that view the website will see that information is outdated and will look elsewhere. This qualifies as a cataclysmic severity since it means no inbound customers (as they are more attracted to some webpage that is moderatly up to date.)

Just remember one change you have to make in your risk analysis: s/risk/certainty/g.

If the manager insists on ROI, head to the advertising department and ask them for their figures. As you know, a website is merely another way of advertising, and no advertising means no business - in fact, advertsing may give you advise on working around your roadblocks as necessary (or otherwise work on your behalf.)

Re:Don't do ROI.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course that implies customers will look at the web page, and that most are not recurrent. And If you don't know where's the benefit of building it, do not do it. Doing it just for the sake of "better" won't cut it.

Re:fuck a trojll

[Anonymous Coward]

Your ideas intrigue me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

password needed

[Teun]

When we find that post-it note with the password the Autodesk guy can change the names of managers that left 1 1/2 years ago.

That's what lean management is all about.

Well at first I thought...

[sryx]

Just two. As founder / CTO of my company I do all the interactive server side programming and I have a brilliantly talented designer create the CSS files and do layout. But it's really a full company approach. While we are a web services company we are far from a "dot com", most of our sales are though direct conversations and conventions. Our website is like a quick brochure to send to prospective clients and a great place to keep our current clients informed about our development. Because we see our website as a communication method, our sales department has continuous input (they after all will be sending it out to prospective clients often in advance of actually meeting them, so they need to know what it says and I value their input on how it was received). And even though the website pales in comparison to our deployed apps (which contain over 60,000 lines of code now and over 400 "web pages", compared to the 15 pages that make up our "site") we all agree that web pages are like business cards (appearance matters). So budgeting for our website is hard to separate, it fills a necessary role in our business and therefore everyone (currently only 6 people) has a role in maintaining it.

Maybe that is what you need to convey to that middle manager, that your company's website is a sales tool, not an expense.
-Jason

www.bluejaycs.com

Dozen or so

[cdrudge]

The company I work for recently implemented a new portal for our customers. We had a core group of maybe a dozen people directly attached to the process during some phase. But if you include content providers, those responsible for maintaining the back end database for our catalogs, advertising, graphics for the images, etc, it was a whole company effort.

It would be like asking someone at Amazon how many people work on the website. Maybe only a subset of the entire company actually works directly for the site, but it's a group effort of everyone and everyone makes an impact in some way.

A better question...

[JavaNPerl]

What is the competition doing? At least try to match them, if you cannot do better. And by better I mean easier to navigate and more informative, not necessarily flashier. Give your customers some recent product information, prices and an online store if possible, spend more time on that and less time on executive profiles and company history crap. I may be in the minority but I generally look on the web first for almost everything. Sometimes companies have lost out on sales from me because I couldn't find any product information on their website or they didn't have an online store, but their competitors did. I'm sure a lot of those companies with the BS websites didn't think their customers were internet users and missed some sales.

how many?

[MikeFM]

1 person - me. The curse of the small business. I did just recently outsource some graphic work that was beyond my ability though and in the future would like to outsource all of the work if I could find people that'd do the work to the standards I want. Data entry alone would be something I could outsource to several full time workers.

Just me.

[irimi_00]

One.

Quit your bitching!

[a gash]

Aye, man!

If you don't like your job and have any type of talent, then quit and find a new one. Untalented? Then your doomed to the hell that is "professional" web development for eternity. If you're risk adverse, then quit submitting/reading slashdot and playing world of warcraft, get a case of frapaccino and go wild. If you wanna get it done, then put in 100hrs a week and kill the bitch. The last thing I wanna see after 18 straight hours of writing ai code is some web developer bitching that he needs more help. WHEN I BLINK I SEE VIM PANES!

Re:Quit your bitching!

[singingjim]

Dude, I love you, but not in a homo sort of way. If that whiner makes anywhere near the dollars that the market dictates he should be, then his ass should be in the office enough to get him divorced if he's married, and lonely if he's got a girlfriend. Build an internet infrastructure from scratch? Oh, I wish! He's a troll! The rewards for pulling that off should be enormous and even if not, what a notch on the ol' resume for the next job that DOES pay what it should.

Re:Quit your bitching!

[a gash]

Yar, this is Morlock the Troll...For ye to attempt to slam me again you must answer three questions...1. Why do ye bitch so much? 2. Why do you love men in the homo way. Homo. yar. 3. Why help a bitcher?

I was a troll, but then i feel in the love with the beautiful princess and she freed me from my spell...so now im a badass motherfucker who loooooooves pussy.

Answer to the question:

[gardyloo]

None of them?

dude remember your roots

[__aalnoi707]

Remember Star Trek. Scotty was the miracle worker, remember Why? Beacause he always added extra time to complete the task. He didnt work faster or slower he just told kirk it took longer then expected. It worked because Krirk wasnt an engineer he was a "Manage" Remember this: Everything I ever needed to learn, I learned from Star Trek

Maybe you shouldn't try to redesign it

[Skapare]

Maybe you shouldn't try to redesign it. With a good roadmap plan of where you want to get to, incremental changes can you there. maybe you're trying to bite off too much in one go? I've seen many a company website turn into a disaster because of that. In one case the webmaster of the site got all angry and blamed it on my browser, on Linux, on my ISP, etc. When I talked on the phone to a sales guy, he agreed that the web site sucked and he had to use the paper catalog for everything (and he used Windows, IE, just like the webmaster told me I should use).

Just don't try to overdo it. Markets change. Business changes direction. Be agile. Don't hop into the latest web coding craze. Just stick to standards that are at least 5 years old, as that's probably the largest base of users that it can work with and still give you some reasonable feature set. And for gawd's sake, no goddamn Flash! (unless you're product is media itself)

Internet Marketing Manager... really?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can prove ROI - but you have to get metrics for it:

1. How much traffic do you get? How much traffic do you think you'll get? Hint: the more pages you have - typically will result in more time spent on your site (and more page views)

2. Are you selling ads? If so, then you can guesstimate off current traffic numbers the revenue. It's called forecasting.

3. If you're not selling ads - if this is a pure marketing or informational site how will the website reduce other manual tasks - like people calling for information.

Clearly you're not that internet saavy if you don't know how to answer these questions.
Clearly you don't know much about marketing if you don't know how to track metrics.
And if you're a manager and asking how many people it takes to do all the various tasks involved in a site launch, you're definitely not a very experienced internet manager.

I work at a large publishing company that runs hundreds of websites. We have well over 50 full time developers, hundreds of edit folks, 5 analysts, 5 UI, 10 designers, and we outsource our email delivery.
We see over 5 billion page views a month and have well over 300 servers supporting our sites.

My advice to you - hire someone - either above or below you who knows what their doing. They can either help you or build a team to help you. But in all honesty... find a job that you know how to do.

Seen it before

[Spinlock_1977]

Not sure how you'll wiggle out of this, but your project scope is too big for the patience of your organization. Chop the thing into smaller, more frequent deliverables over a longer period if you can. It's less efficient to be sure, but if you get shut down, well that's 0% efficiency.

sure!

[/dev/trash]

2.

yes 2.

Re:ROI? That's impossible...

[geekoid]

simple.
Do I have some customers? Did they find me becasue of my sign? there is your base for an ROI.

Of course, no one did it because it was pretty obvious you needed a sign.

For a web site, yiour ROI is generated traffic, as well as removing costs from other places of business. For example, can a support web site save you money in man power? telco costs? Does it have a marketing value? Does it have a sale value?

That like saying yu ca't get some ROI number friom a tv commercial, which you can.

THIS IS FRED

[Anonymous Coward]

DAMN YOU!!!!!

Just Me

[Kenshin]

I work for a company of about 10 people.

I manage all the IT stuff.

I've been trying to run the website for years. By "trying", I mean I virtually have to hold a gun to my boss' head to get him to help write product literature for the site. (The new version of our relatively small website has been in development for over a year for this very reason.)

Two people in our Internet department

[WillAffleckUW]

Me, the Data Manager.

And our Network person.

But we do medical research, so I'm not sure how typical that would be.

Re:Two people in our Internet department

[MikeBabcock]

Well there's myself, and my boss. His partner is a programmer and my co-worker is also a programmer.

Four programmers, two of which are inter-network techs, two of which own the company.

Its a fun environment.

Local vs. National

[daeg]

At the local level, we have 3 full time web guys. We each do our own thing, though. I do coding, another does graphics, and the third does content, although all three of us can do content/graphics as required. As far as advertising, I think there are about 20 employees in our advertising department. Most of what they do is on-air content, though, very little spills over onto the web. We are trying to get the rest of the employees to generate web content from their on-air content/stories, but it is rough going to teach new media to old media people. We have a few engineers that support our local IT systems (thankfully a lot of this is automated!).

Nationally there are quite a few people to support the many websites/IT services throughout the company. Each local group is responsible for their own site. The company itself is a Fortune 500 company and a few of our websites are in the top 100/500 rankings as far as uniques/day.

Some of the other groups focus more on web than others, it depends greatly on target demographics. If your station/group targets the elderly, your website isn't as big of a concern compared to a group that was trying to capture a younger audience or a more national audience.

We are diffused into the company

[snowwrestler]

I work for a trade association with a staff of about 400. Because of the nature of trade associations (divided into lots of little side groups), we have about 25 individual Web sites with probably about 7000-9000 pages of content and light Web apps. We outsource our hosting and LAN to a contractor (they have offices within the building though).

We are actually in the process of taking a "Web Team" of 7 people and diffusing it into the Communications department as a whole. We were a cohesive group dedicated to all Web presence inside and out. Now the responsibilities have been sub-divided and spread throughout about 10 people in the Comm. department (not all of them work on Web or e-mail full time). In addition we run a CMS and have about 50 people throughout the organization trained to make basic content updates to the site.

We have grown continuously over the last 5 years despite having a COO who asks us in meetings "Why does the Web site matter? Why do we even need one?" The key for us has been two-fold. First, we define metrics for the online products and show constant improvement. Page views are up year over year, e-commerce is up year-over-year (mostly event registration and publication sales), etc. Second, we enlist supporters throughout the building by making the things people already do easier or more effective by taking it online. We focus HEAVILY on internal customer service and it's very important to keep people in the building happy. We won't get cut because too many people would complain.

It is my personal opinion that our diffusement is only the beginning of the end for "Web Teams." Staff here, even VPs, do not have typists or secretaries taking dication any more. They don't send every memo through the print shop for layout. Some basic facility with typing and the features of Microsoft Word are now just an understood part of corporate life. It is my opinion that as the tools get easier, and the generation turns over, basic facility with the Web will be the same way. I bet within 10 years policy staff will be directly updating their sections of the site themselves, and in 20 VPs will too. They won't be using HTML any more than they use Quark now; they will be using a new tool that makes it easier to work on Web pages--probably a more advanced CMS.

About Half

[Anonymous Coward]

About Half

uhh

[Anonymous Coward]

So if you're asking a community like slashdot this type of question, I would wonder why you're in the position of managing anything besides your own demise.

Why not call a consultant?

If your situation is so precarious, I suggest actually looking at colleges and business schools.

Re:ROI? That's impossible...

[schizocat]

This isn't the 1600s and a website isn't a wooden sign. In this day and age, all marketing tools are expected to prove that they were worth the investment. Why do you think so many questionaires have that "How did you hear about us?" question at the bottom. The guys at the top want to make sure they aren't wasting their money on advertising that doesn't work.

I think your understanding of ROI is a little narrow....Yes, in many cases it boils down to who bought your product in the long run but it's not always that simple in the short term and reporting aspects. What you track to prove ROI depends on the company and for a website it's definately not always "customers bought an average of 500 more [PRODUCT] on our site per month since we launched the new site design."

For example, on a new car dealership site you usually don't expect to sell the car online. You use it to get qualified leads. Get the prospective customers information and decide if they're worth the manhours it would take to close the sale in person. Schedule test drives and leave it up to the sales guy at the dealership to close the sale. He'll spend less time talking to people who aren't really serious and (if everything works properly) end up with more commissions and make more money for the dealership. The number of people referred from the site is something you CAN track as well as the percentage of them ended up being successful sales. Compare that to the number of people who wander in off the street and what percentage of them are successful sales and you have your proof that the site was worth the $$ spent.

many jobs ~ 2 people

[avi33]

For 22 sites in 14 languages...

Worker one:
General Manager, html/photoshop/illustrator production, product photographer, global administrivia manager, web reporting, banner development, way too much more to list.

Worker two (me):
Developer, Technical Manager, DBA, e-mail campaign executor, project manager for outsourced work, manage SEO and keyword purchases, occasional copywriter and all-around shortstop.

Mostly possible from a bunch of homegrown text-file and DB-based content management tools.

For the record, we just converted our 4,000 page (across 22 sites) to full css, and hired an outside firm for the template design (helps to have outsiders push new ideas through mid and upper management) and for the laborious debug and platform test. Their budget was about $33k, though we got an extra $10k added on here and there. A competing firm estimate we did the sites for $200k, but most of the production was done by the two of us.

data

[Anonymous Coward]

Sheer data: 125 servers, 8 sites. Central dc with 4 admins, 2 network engineers each site with one redundant/on-site admin

Why Was He Given A "Manager" Role?

[nick_davison]

Here's a simple concept that he could have learned from playing The Sims for half an hour:

Your Sim is miserable in his apartment. He has a crappy TV that doesn't make him very happy. You are confident that a big plasma TV would make him much happier and thus he'd work harder, get promoted, and earn far more than the cost of the TV back.

Sensible person's approach: Earn what you can. Upgrade the TV for a slightly better one. Earn faster with the better TV. Upgrade once you can. Repeat until you have the plasma TV.

Idiot's approach: Sell the old TV. Afterall, it sucks. Go to buy a plasma. Discover you don't have the money to buy the plasma and now you can't even afford to buy back the crappy TV. Watch your Sim get depressed, skip work, and get demoted, earning less.

Yes, a wholly new website would be spiffy and, quite possibly, keen too. But there's not enough money for a wholly new website that proves the shining vision of the net as somewhere to invest.

A sensible manager - or a ten year old kid who's played The Sims - will thus not try and gut the whole damn thing. They'll take a week, a month, whatever period they figure they can handle and do the best job they can on one small part. They'll then use that success to argue for better resources to work on a bigger part next. In time they'll have proved repeatedly that money spent on them is a good investment, be doing large chunks at a time, with a well resourced team - and all those small parts will add up anyway.

If I walked up to my CEO and said, "I need 8 server side engineers, 4 html guys, 3 artists, 2 content writers, 2 sys admins, 3 db guys and two secretaries, can I have a $2.4m budget please?" I would damn well expect to get laughed out of his office.

On the other hand, if I took myself and the one other guy I had and proved a $100,000/year return on investment from our first $25,000 of work, I'd expect a much easier time of justifying an extra head count to hire on maybe an artist. The next project spends say $40,000 and makes $150,000 extra a year and I can likely get a dba. Repeat enough times, consistently giving the company more than it pays and I'll get my 24 person team. Ask for all 24 of them all at once and I should absolutely expect to get laughed out of the office and then fired for being an utterly clueless manager.

I hope you're KISSING it

[Anonymous Coward]

As in "Keep it Simple, Stupid..."

I hope the complexities are somehow endemic to the creation of a functional website, and not because of some foolish developer onanism with useless Flash, Active X, Java Script, or whatever the flavor of the month glitz happens to be.

A simple website interface should speed things up, shouldn't it?

If it helps -

[log0n]

just one (me). Worked as the sole web developer for an mid-size public school system. 50+ schools, another 20 departments, intranet - roughly 14k pages of content.

You'll never have enough to do the job. It's up to you (and your personality / work ethic) whether or not you make the job work.

its tough, but doable

[PhiberOptix]

I was part of the team that implemented the localized intranet content for my country... so I got to spend some time with the guy in charge of our internet/intranet websites. Hes a veteran that worked for over 25 years in the company, and he struggled a lot to get the higher management believe him that our companys website, a completely Flash based (bleh) usability nightmare needed to be updated. It was ugly.
How was he able to change that? starting from inside. He joined forces with a developer to customize a CMS to build a intranet for our company. That made things easier to keep the intranet site more accessible to the users.
After that he struggled once again to educate users what a intranet was and how it worked. He trained people from different areas so that they themselves could help update the intranet website.

The intranet was then installed as the default homepage for all users. That created awareness, and many people started requesting specific intranet websites to their department within the main intranet.
Nowadays the internet site was made using the same tools that were used to create the intranet, but the main point is user awareness. Not only "IT people" contributed to the intranet, but regular users are encouraged to feed it as well. This made the internet/intranet website idea more accessible to the users, and that made it easier to completely upgrade our companys internet site as well.

Maybe you should ask this manager to help you update your intranet website. He might find it useful, and become a fan. or not. But making the website more accessible to regular users proved (at least in my case) that this was the easiest way to get people to really use our intranet website...

Pushing is a central part...

[WebCowboy]

...of a manager's role.

He's a manager, not a coder. He doesn't need to push back, he needs to spend his time managing.

What do you think management is if it isn't "pushing"? This fellow is managing a major web development project, and resource allocation (resources being time, money and people) is an essential, unavoidable part of the process. Unless you are a "supreme manager" who answers to nobody, like a president or COO or something, then it is this guys job to estimate as accurately as possible what resources are required to achieve the goals of the project.

Market the idea to the rest of company. Sending out mockups and ROI case studies of other companies can entice your manager and/or his manager

If this guy was already tasked with managing this project and already has coders working on it, the appropriate time to obtain buy-in has long since passed--his employer has bunged things up big time if there is no buy-in now. In my place of employment, it is NOT the job of project managers to sell the project (whether it is internal or external)--there are other people to do that ("business development specialists" for external projects and committees for internal projects).

Use your budget more effectively.

I'd say that you should remove the first two words...this guy should "budget more effectively" and have a strong argument to back those numbers to his superiors (this is where the "pushback" comes into play). If your superior is not convinced then you must compromise on your deliverables/goals. If this guy cannot get enough of a budget to hire more coders then examine outsourcing/contractors. If the budget is still too lean, make do with the meagre number of people and revise the schedule, and be firm to superiors about that schedule. If the schedule is too long then cut down features/scope. If you are still not in a good place then push to have the project cancelled entirely. That'll get the big bosses attention and if it is as important as your company's online presence that is 1990s stale then the guy being the roadblock will have drawn a lot of negative attention to himself.

Build trust. You need to gain a reputation as someone who gets things done, and can be trusted with a task.

Not just getting things done...getting them done on time and within budget. Even Larry the Cable Guy can "git 'er done". To garner a reputation of trust you must set attainable goals and meet them reliably. You won't get respect by throwing together your online store in record time if it is full of bugs, awkward to use and has a dumb security hole like SQL injection that lets a hacker clear all passwards or steal customer purchasing information..even though you "got things done".

Don't make excuses. Learn to put a positive spin on timetables, instead.

Not always possible to put a positive spin on scheduling things (I wonder how positive BillG or ballistic Ballmer felt when they learned Vista was pushed back to January 2007). And there are always valid excuses--I prefer to call them "reasons". You just have to acknowledge when you are responsible for them and make sure people know when THEY are responsible for them. And don't dewll on the excuse, concentrate on the solution.

Don't commit to a project unless you and your superiors are agreed on the timetables.

If your employer is as screwed up as I suspect this guys was, it is possible that he wasn't voluntarily committed to the schedule. In fact, he might not have even been given a specific schedule or had much cooperation in defining the goals or the design. In that case there will never be an end. He says his employer's site has been stagnant for eight years...back in the 1990s it was the thing to do to put "under construction" on a site. I'd bet that this site might still have those nasty little notices on it.

Kindred Soul

[breid7718]

I hear you. We are a newspaper publishing group with 25 products, 250 users and 7 locations. We maintain 6 public websites, all of which are IIS/SQL Server/ASP monstrosities with 24/7 information publishing, public forums, chat, blogs, photo galleries, ad rotation, etc. We have 30 servers, including installations of Oracle and 4 SQL Server installs. We host our own websites, DNS, Exchange Server, etc. We have 185 workstations in said 7 locations, spread out over about 150 square miles. The remote sites work through our servers through a VPN solution, which we maintain. Most of our applications are developed and maintained in-house. Our shop is also a production facility, so we support users from 6 AM to 3 AM. Personnel to support this? Me. And me alone. 1 guy. My former "generous" staff of 5 was reduced due to an overanxious COO who just got his MBA and decided to ramp up profits locally. I would leave in a heartbeat, but tech jobs in this area are very limited and I can't relocate because my wife's business is the cash cow of the family. And I'm just not enough of an entrepeneur to strike out on my own. Oh yeah, and my salary is around 30% less than comparable positions in the area who actually have a staff to assist. I tell every curious high schooler who asks about my career to get a job in sales...

If you live here, not enough...

[sd790]

City Manager of Tuttle, Oklahoma proves to CentOS that they need a bigger "Internet Department". Read about it here. hehe

Just me

[KittyPrincess]

Our company is part of a global conglomerate. Our local office has about 300 employees. We do strictly manufacturing. OUr only customer is the owner of the global conglomerate, so we don't need to maintain a db of products or customers. Our extranet is simple. Our intranet is a third party package. I strive to find ways to be visible with the improvements we make so that the company sees me as a necessity rather than a luxury. Your situation sounds difficult, but typical. Sounds like a project management issue, primarily. If the project doesn't have sponsorship from someone at the top, it's doomed. Your sponsor should be your advocate and in a position to override the senseless ramblings of an underling. Of course, you also have to show value add throughout the life cycle of your project. Not always easy. Best of luck to you. thekitty

Don't be a wuss

[AngryNick]

It sounds like you willingly took a job at a company with a non-technical business model, old-school managers, and a half-baked idea of how the web can help increase their revenues. It's now your job to make the best of the situation and knock out little chunks of reality in an organization whose current business model is fundamentally opposed to making money through the web.

I got into the same deal, but with a much larger monster of an organization, with lots of developers, thousands of servers, and endless financial resources. Here's what I learned: two passionate and committed coders with a clear understanding of their company's business and customers can produce more than an army of egos, project managers, analysts, disengaged sponsors.

I suggest you pick a target that the two of you can hit in 30 days, communicate that goal to your boss's boss, bust your asses to hit the target in 20 days, then spend the next 10 days figuring out your next 30 day trick. Rinse and repeat.

As you complete these little projects, you will A) gain the trust and confidence of the guys with the money, and B) increase your own confidence in your team's abilities. Yes, there will be bugs and system-wide FUps, but that's the price of playing the game with 2 guns in a 4x6 cube.

With time you will learn to identify the low-risk opportunities for investments, where the ROI is high and the time to execute is low. Some of these investments might be adding new features, others may be in hiring a new person. Management will come to respect your judgment.

The point is to run your shop like your own business and spend your time and money as if it were your own. If you're not making money for the company, and seeking ways to make even more, then they don't need you. Yes, having a few more people sounds appealing, but you need to have a direction to send them first.

How many work?

[myram]

About half of them...

Dosent think internet is important

[poker bonuses]

Its amazing in this day and age a manager dosent see the importance of the internet. has this guy been living in a black hole?

What?

[cubicledrone]

A middle manager is a road block?

SAY IT ISN'T SOOOOOOOO!!!

Hey Middle Management!

[cubicledrone]

Want ROI? Buy a municipal bond.

Employees don't provide ROI. Management does. Deal with it.

Only way to be sure....

[jafiwam]

Submit it to "WebPages that Suck.com", win the t-shirt, and wear it to work. Only way to be sure.

Seriously, maybe a company that got by with an 8 year old web site needs a 24.99 web template and about 6 pages saying where it is, who they sell to, a phone #, an email address, and job openings.

If you are doing business fine now, you don't NEED a web site.

Or take a different tack, make the site a place for customers to self-order or check status and make it plain jane. Your target audience is long gone by now so you might as well craft a new one that suits your project ability and process.

How Many People Work in Your Internet Department?

[bigboss1234]

Since you took the job, I am not going to comment on that decision. And I am not going to go over what you should have done before you started the project either. You said it was a mid-level manager that give you grief. Can you convince people higher up that you need more resources and time ? If you can, you can try that trick. If not, it is too late to convince these mid-level people you need more resources and time. You have to win their trust first. Your best bet now is to see whether there is any quick fixes you can deliver and can make measurable changes to the business. If you can, focus on delivering these little system changes that make big business change. Don't try to do a complete and perfect job. You don't have the time and resources, remember ? With these new changes, implement them, and measure. Show them how much business change you have achieved, you may be able to win their trust, and convince them that you need more resources. If these fails, open the third envelope.

Oh brother

[Anonymous Coward]

"You mean those guys who send out mock-ups 2 months into a project, but wait for 5 months into a 6 month project ask me what "Websphere" is"

Maybe. But contractors like this are usually managed by *incompetent mangement*. Seems like you have one deliverable instead of multiple deliverables.

Just to be clear about what I'm saying... the contractor is bad, but you're worse.

Re:Oh brother

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Again, these weren't my projects. I was mearly a collegue or an admin in the organization.

Sometimes I helped to support the project, but I can't FORCE someone to check their email or voicemail. If someone doesn't read the email titled "Your CVS access" for 4 months and doesn't return my calls it's not really my fault.

Re:Oh brother

[singleantler]

If the manager stuffed up that badly with the contracting company, what makes you think they'd have been any better with full time employees? It appears they chose the wrong company at the interview stage, and that makes it likely they would have done the same thing with a standard employee.

Yes, the contracting company was at fault, but the manager is still in charge of the project. If he/she isn't getting information back out of the contracting company, that should be ringing alarm bells well before the scheduled end of the project.

None now

[meme_police]

I work for one of the 26 TV stations that our company owns, 2200 employees, and they outsourced our websites back in 2001. I was on the web team at the time and at the highpoint we had 6 people handling the front end app, the app server, the network, and the database, 5 people handling design, 3 or 4 people per station providing content, and a few salespeople dedicated to new media advertising. Actually those salespeople are still employees dedicated to selling web advertising and sponsorship but they are now part of the regular sales team.

I don't miss it because our newscasts generated a lot of traffic and our crappy application server couldn't handle the traffic. So it was a page every time the sites were mentioned on a broadcast, and they were mentioned A LOT. Having stations on both coasts meant that those pages came at anytime from 3am to 11:30pm local time. And there were only 2 of us sharing the pager. I didn't sleep for 39 weeks out of that year and a half.

Way too many

[NCalGal]

I work for a major HealthCare Organization in IT.I worked on the Internet side in IT for 5 years. It is a very interactive site, connecting to many complex systems to give secured medical information to people. However, still, there are simply way too many developers, PMs, consultants and management working on the site. Approximately 35 mil $$ a year is spent across biz/IT. Approximately 300+ employees are recording time against this work at any given time. Surely complex, but really could be done for half of that.

Everyone

[sicking]

At my company we're heavily investing in our Internet department. In fact, it's so big that everyone at the company works there.

Oh, did I mention that I work at the Mozilla Corporation?

Anywhere between...

[Karl Cocknozzle]

...zero and one person (thankfully not me,) depending on how you define "department." It is painfully neglected, anemic entity that is just now considering an online store.

So yeah, it is worrisome.

I'm not sure you guys understand a question!

[WorkinTooHard]

For those of you who read the question, thank you! For those who offered well meaning advice, "it's the thought that counts". A bit of it was interesting and raises some questions. For those that spouted off because they can or spitted back the "canned responses". Perhaps some more information would be useful: First, I spend about 100 hours per week on this site and the other sites involved. For those who think I should get to work, *&%^$ off! You're wasting my time having to weed through your bullshit comments. We are a B2B company with no direct sales through our website - Why? Our business model does not support it, even though a majority of our product should be sold online. We sell everything from extremely simple products which require no support and is a very very simple sale through backplanes for blade servers and AdvancedTCA products which has a complex sales and support cycle. We have made incremental changes to the current site over the past two years, effective enough to quadruple our traffic and increase targeted leads eight-fold. We deal with over 20,000 unique visitors a day and yes our analytic tools are well used. These changes are part of the site overhaul and are designed to easily fold into the new site. However, with no tracking built into the business model, from landing page to product purchase, there is no way to prove return on investment because all sales are done through a completely different system including alot of handshakes and golf outings. In order to change the business model requires weeks/months of sales time to upper management as well as a complete restructure of our SAP implementaion. A luxury I don't have! Mockups/Demos have been created, explained and drooled over, there is no fancy Flash, wasted time with AJAX and Java, the design is simple and well layed out with supported plans documented and demonstrated through phase 3.7 - We just need to complete phase 1.0. I've been doing this since 1994, the only difference is, the past 12 years I have been the contractor, this is the first company I have been on the company payroll and for some reason, the buracreacy is willing to pay the consultant 10 times more and listen alot closer than they do to the experience they have under there nose. So back to the question: How many people work on your company's websites, email marketing, SEO/SEM, etc...? What type of business? B2B, B2C, Both?

Re:I'm not sure you guys understand a question!

[Jerim]

To be honest, and this is just me, but this seems more like a marketing ploy. Asking how many employee's a company has seems like more of a survey. Try asking for solutions to your problem, not data from other companies.

Of course, you may be trying to take a corporate survey of other IT departments in order to present it to your company for comparison. If that is the case, you need to be more formal about it. A slashdot discussion board isn't exactly the best data to use and may get you laughed out of the room.

I agree with previous posters, you are a manager. You need to try as hard as you can to get your point across to managment. Use the universal manager's language of charts and reports. Use some of your contacts at other companies to discuss their staffing levels. Talk to contract firms and describe the project you are working on. Ask them to get you a quote for price and man hours. Show your bosses what other companies are charging and their timeframe. There is no way any reputable company will argue with that data.

As a manager myself in a small business I frequently argue with my boss over deadlines and expectations. Don't be afraid to say "No." They won't demote you or fire you. You have to have no fear. A lot of times, people will judge needs by how forceful you are in demanding them. If you put up passive resistance to something, they are going to logically assume that you must not need it that bad.

Just let them know up front that their demands are unreasonable and never waiver. If the project fails, at least you get to tell them "I told you so." Chances are very good they will be out of business within a year.

Re:I'm not sure you guys understand a question!

[ImdatS]

However, with no tracking built into the business model, from landing page to product purchase, there is no way to prove return on investment because all sales are done through a completely different system including alot of handshakes and golf outings.

You don't need to have a tracking method or direct sales to prove a business case (ROI, ROCE, whatever you call it, all are numbers for one thing: business case!).

There are two business case solutions: 1) More revenue through higher sales, 2) lower costs through efficient sales (production, manufacturing, distribution, marketing, etc.)

Now, you have to choose which of the paths you want to go. You can't really go both paths at the same time, i.e. you can't really have higher sales as well as lower costs with one action (well, at least not in most cases).

Once you have chosen which way to go, you then do two calculations: 1) The result if the project is performed and 2) what happens, when you don't undertake the project (people often forget that "doing nothing" is one of the many options you have).

So, you can't say that you can't prove ROI - you just don't want to be bothered with the details of proving the business case - I am sorry, you just don't really care whether the project you are undertaking is making money for your company (or saving money = making money, too). As long as your management has the impression that you don't care about making money for the company, you will (rightfully) never get additional staff. Prove the business case of adding more people to your project - prove it to your boss, your boss's boss and so on - and if you believe in your project, then fight for it up until the CEO!

I'm talking here as someone who did it exactly this way. One day, I even went to the COO and asked him how he can live with having a department without any profits so far... Well, that gained respect.

In order to change the business model requires weeks/months of sales time to upper management as well as a complete restructure of our SAP implementaion.

Nobody is talking about changing the business model! Change your attitude to your project, your boss and other managers - as well as your attitude to your job! If you are working 100 hours a week, you're certainly making a big mistake somewhere. You're certaily not doing your correctly (or you haven't don your job correctly in the first place) - Here again, I am talking to you: a Manager!

How many people work on your company's websites, email marketing, SEO/SEM, etc...? What type of business? B2B, B2C, Both?

This doesn't solve your problem. Why do you need that information? Do you need a solution for your problem? Then go ahead, read all the very insightful comments here.

But I have the feeling that you just want to prove your boss that you need more people - nothing else! You're not trying to solve your problem, you're just trying to prove to your boss that "... other companies have a lot more people for the same task ... " and that's a proof that you are definitely understaffed, etc. etc - ad infinitum!

Re:I'm not sure you guys understand a question!

[Jerim]

Agreed. The only the that works in the business world is money. Show them where they are not using their money efficently and they will act.

Might have to also show them why the project will fail and waste all the money that was invested into it. If it takes $10k more to complete the project successfully, they are more inclined to increase budgeting. No one wants to fail.

Data

[fbg111]

I work at a regional airline with roughly 3000 employees and ~$1 billion total revenue in 2005, > $500 million of which was generated through our own website. IT has 80 people divided between several divisions - Network Engineering (Network Admins), Systems Engineering (Sys Admins), Systems Development (DBAs, Web, App Devs), Support (both IT and company-wide IT support & helpdesk), and IT management. The official 'web team' consists of about 10 Devs and DBAs in the SysDev group, but the de facto web team draws in more from the Network Engineering and Systems Engineering groups. I'd estimate the de facto web team size at about 10 - 20 people, depending on the current state of affairs (humming along, crisis mode, upgrade mode, or wherever else on that continuum). Even so, it's a stretch sometimes to accomplish all of our priorities in a highly competitive market, and we have 15 open reqs throughout all of IT, a good chunk of which are for SysDev, web subgroup.

Hope that helps, and fwiw, sounds to me like you're understaffed.

Re:WTF is an "Internet" department?

[TapeCutter]

It is something an "Internet Marketing Manager" looks after, often it's just a kid with a server but in big bussiness it is someone who has project Management skills.

My guess is that the submitter has just realised the words "Internet" and "Management" are part of his title, has put 2 and 2 together, and now thinks he is responsible for managing the internet.

There is no reason given WHY the "respected roadblock" is sitting in his way. There is no reason given WHY a crudely estimated ROI can't be offered based on experiences of other companies, (expected traffic, hit/$$$ ratio, whatever, IANAIMM). There is no explanation as to who is re-building the site, simply the royal "we". Is the "respected roadblock" part of "we" or is he a (competing) "we" running a non-internet department? Why is "everybody" asking about timetables if he is already in the middle of the project?

Some people learn from screwing up, others just screw up.

Not a fad?

[Just Another Poster]

Two years ago, I took the job of Internet Marketing Manager for a international company, with a crazy idea that I could convince senior management that the internet wasn't a fad.

Two years ago? A lot of people were convinced of that ten years ago.

Being Understaffed is bad...

[kefler]

But all the resources in the world couldn't help you if you had this guy as your boss: http://www.centos.org/modules/news/article.php?sto ryid=127

How many people work in your internet department?

[tlayne]

About half of them.

Qualified?

[DeadboltX]

Exactly what kind of a website is this, if it is just an informational website about the company than it prolly could have been elegantly done in the time it took the poster to type up this cry baby post.

Huh?!

[acidrain69]

If you are the "Internet Marketting Manager" for your company, you need to tell them that at the very least, internet marketing involves a website so people can find you or get information. My company had someone else do the website, and we update data for it every day (customer information so they can pull their accounts). We have about 5 IT people for a company of 150 (about, may be near 200 soon)

This is the best advice yet

[hansg]

I think this holds for pretty much any complex project.

Make sure you show real effect as soon as possible. Then you don't have to try to explain some abstract ROI for everyone in the organisation.

This real effect then helps you get more support throughout the project.

This works in pretty much any type of project, not just software development.

Hans

The job of a Project Manager

[ImdatS]

I've been managing projects large and small for nearly a decade now (and having an MBA in Project- and Processmanagement) and having read your call-for-help, I can tell you that it seems you made most of the mistakes one can make as a project manager.

The only problem was that I didn't expect a (respected) mid-level manager to be the road block.

One of the most important issues when you plan a project is to analyze the environment of it (i.e. the environment in which the project is run) and make a list of all (potential) stakeholders. There are potential stakeholders who will definitely try to block or even sabotage your project - but there are also stakeholders who could possibly help you.

In order to have a successful project, it's not enough to specify what has to be done, when and with whom but also in which environment the project is running, what was before the project started, what will be after the end of the project, what is part of the project and specifically also what is NOT part of the project.

I am not sure if the manager you mention above existed already before you started that project, but having learned lots of lessons from all my projects, I even suggest for planning for potential roadblocking middle managers.

Planning in this sense means specifically to try to figure out who the stakeholders are and what you as a project manager (or project team member) will do ("Actions") to get the stakeholder on board or to make sure he/she cannot hinder your job (i.e. make a list of all actions/activities against your potential "foes" and a list of actions/activities to support your "friends").

A friend of mine wrote his Master Thesis specifically on "Why Projects Fail" (unfortunately it's only in German) and the main reason is usually not bad budgeting, insufficient staffing or moving targets. Of course, those reasons are valid, too, but the main reason is that Project Managers fail to account for stakeholders.

Which brings me to the subject "Project Marketing". Someone above said that "Selling the project" is not his job as Project Manager since there a "Business Development Managers" and such. That's exactly the opposite. Selling the project (inside and outside of the company) is one of the core tasks of a Project Manager. I am not talking about "Selling a Service" or "Selling a Product", i.e. I am specifically not talking about selling the Project Result but the project itself. So, it is of utmost importance to keep doing project marketing in order to gain support or keep support and in order to prevent road-blocks such as your middle manager.

We are in the middle of a major website redesign (the current site has not been updated in over 8 years) and everyone is asking why it takes so long to complete, and almost daily I have to explain that I do not have enough manpower.

This is a big mistake. Where's the Project Marketing? Where is Project Status Reports? If people do ask, then use it as an opportunity to sell the project to them. I mean, come on, when people ask - especially on a daily basis - it means, they are interested and you mus, as a good Project Manager, seize the opportunity to market your project.

Marketing a project also means gaining support from managers, making people interested in your project to project champions, your evangelists... If only you could convert those people interested in your project to your evangelists, you wouldn't have that much of a problem gaining support and probably getting more people then.

It might even help you in pushing aside the road-block. Even if he/she is a respected middle manager, he has probably lots of friends - if you could only get one or two of them to become your evangelist...

Of course, I can't prove ROI until the new site is launched (a great Catch22).

A NO-NO!! If you haven't proven the business case of your project beforehand why start it in the first place?

I am sorry, but this is a wh

It would be much easier if ....

[snoggeramus]

It would be much easier if you used Joomla. www.joomla.com

Re:ROI? That's impossible...

[Eivind]

It migth have been obvious that you needed some sort of sign. But it's a lot less "obvious" that you need a large hand-carved wooden sign. People would find you equally well if you just took a paintbrush and painted "Bobs horseshoes" over the door in 5 minutes.

So, is the added investment worth it ? Does it have a reasonable ROI ? Impossible to tell for sure.

You're probably get more customers entering your shop if the shop looks like the shop of someone who knows what hes doing. A good-looking sign migth contribute to that. Image also tends to change what *type* of customers you get, what expectations they have and to some degree even what they're prepared to pay.

You can guesstimate, but it's going to be horribly rough, and you'll never know for sure if your guess was correct or not. Like they say; 80% of advertising is wasted -- the problem is that noone really knows *which* 80%.

Go back to basics

[Anonymous Coward]

Write a project plan. Make the project small enough to fit in your budget.

Get your project plan approved. This is the place where you have to assert some ROI. You don't have to prove ROI at this point, just get it approved.

Develop the website.

Deploy it, and measure the ROI at this point.

Really I can't feel a lot of sympathy for you, it sounds like you are partway through development with a project which has no specifications and you're under-funded to deliver something you promised. Don't start developing until you have enough resources to develop whatever you promise!

Re:Go back to basics

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, and forget the part about asking what other companies do. That's just bullshit. Ask yourself: what do you need so you can deliver what you promised. Alternately, ask yourself what you can deliver with the resources you've already got. And then either go and get more resources, or scale back your development to fit with what you have.

Show them the toilet!

[RonTheHurler]

I had a similar problem before I left corporate and started my own company. While I was a mere employee though, this was by far the most successful conversation I had-

CEO: All we're asking for is a picture, some text and a few buttons. It's just HTML right? How hard can it be to put some buttons on a page? Can't you just hire a college kid for a day to do the HTML?

Me: Well, how long does it take to build a house. I mean, it's just a few walls and a roof, right?

CEO: I'm not talking about the whole web site, but a few buttons on the pages we already have.

Me: Ok, so in this house that's already completed. Let's install a toilet. It's simple right? Let's say you want it in the living room. No problem, Just bring in a toilet and bolt it to the floor. There you go. All done.
Except, you want it to actually work. Hmmm. Well, we can bring a waterhose in from the yard and cut a hole in the floor under the toilet. Just do your stuff, then go out and turn on the water hose to flush it under the floor. Don't forget to turn the water off.

CEO: Are you really telling me that adding a few buttons to a web page is like installing a toilet?

Me: I'm saying that you can just bolt a toilet to the floor the same way you can just slap a few buttons on a web page- it will LOOK fine, unless you want them to actually work. In a few weeks, or a few days you'll wish that you'd paid attention to the contractor and spent the time and money to get proper plumbing to that toilet. If you don't, you'll have a stinking mess in no time. Our web pages, databases, application layers, interfaces, etc. can all be thought of like a house, or an office building. Lots of interconnected systems, plumbing, wires... But for a web site we use terms like ports, application layers, back end database, front end interface, sessions, data consistency, load balancing, failover system, etc. Not to mention the dreaded cookies. Remember that fiasco when we had to yank all the cookies off our web site because the VP of marketing read a magazine article, and suddenly nothing worked anymore?

The bottom line is, if you don't do things right, you'll regret it soon enough, and it'll cause lots of headaches and cost a whole lot more to fix later. Imagine a house that wasn't designed first. Everything was just added on as fast and cheaply as possible. Hoses, wires, water and funny smells everywhere. A disaster waiting to happen.
To continue the analogy, you wouldn't hire some kid out of college to do the plumbing in your house. You'd hire a licensed plumber who knows about pressure, drainage, how to keep the shower from scalding you if someone flushes while you're taking a shower, proper venting- do you even know what the vents are for on your roof? Some of them make your toilets work. If you didn't know that when you installed your toilet, you'd be sorry real fast. So, since plumbing is all standardized and has been around since the Romans, what makes you think that the Internet, with very little standardization and very much higher level of complexity than mere plumbing, can be done properly by some college kid?

CEO: Well, get a designer then.

Me: I'm the designer.

CEO: Well, then get to work on it!

Me: I AM working on it, and so are the two guys I hired to do the programming and database work. And so is the nearly worthless Interactive Usability Analyst you made me hire. That's almost three and a half people. It takes more than thirty people in at least nine areas of expertise to build a simple house you know. (for the reader- foundation, framing, roofing, wiring, plumbing, drywall, cabinetry, floors, doors, paint and/or masonry.)

CEO: So, when will it be done?

Me: As soon as we can figure out where the data is going from those last data inputs, I mean "buttons" you had put on the web site by that consultant we can't seem to locate anymore, and clean up that mess. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom.

Oh, one more thing, please stop writing

Re:Show them the toilet!

[jo42]

MBA : Master Bullsite Artiste

About 0.25

[Mutatis Mutandis]

The website development and graphics are all contracted out. Only the content is developed in-house, by a scientific writer, so that we can be sure that it is both correct and well written. We can't ask web developers to check the content. I assume the legal department also checks it for any statements that various regulatory authories might object against. (Or adding SEC-required disclaimers etc.) I think that this in itself is a good model.

The biggest potential problem that I see is a tendency of upper management to try to influence detail design, and their unfortunate tendency towards glitz: Flash animations, rolling menus, ticker bars, high-resolution graphics, and the like. These might consume a lot of time and money and only rarely contribute to a good website. (One of the few happy exceptions I have seen is Nikon's microscopy training website, which is great.) But my personal preference would be for a site that is styled in a minimalistic way, light and fast.

Two questions for management

[plopez]

1) What is the priority of your project?
2) Based on #1, ask for resources based on apparent priority.

If they do not meet your requests for item #2, kill the project. Otherwise it will just drag on as a zombie and suck your life away.

To kick start the project, try to find an upper manager who is enthusiastic about the project. In project management lingo this is called a 'sponsor'. This person will politic with the rest of management to keep the project alive, a high priority and lobby for money.

If you cannot find a sponsor, kill the project. Use your budget and personnel where they can have an impact, not on a zombie project.

never be the one left making the web page

[Anonymous Coward]

I once worked for a company that got a contract to put a fashion house on the Internet. The fashion people sent down some photos and there they stayed in the filing cabinet for months. Well on the day of the demo they were to have a big do with all the fashion people invited and the media and food laid on. The only thing was they forgot to make the actual web page. No one bothered to tell the tech department. For a company with communications in the title there was a distinct lack of it.

Everyone had to drop everything and spend the whole day in putting up a quick demo. At five we were all told to go home as the important people were coming so we were not invited to the do.

I used to read in the tech press that we were a) going into sector A, getting out of sector B, going back into sector A. This was the only clue as to what was going on at our company. One of the managers later got an award for 'Internet Strategist' whatever that is.

Later on I read a CV of some consultant they were hiring on from the US to design an ecommerce site. They'de accidentally left it on the public sector of our FTP site. The reason managment hires in is so as their own tech department don't find out how clueless they really are.

You see IT people are considered about as much important as janitors.

Yep

[tacokill]

And the #1 rule if you are a contractor/consultant is: make the person that hired you look REALLY good.

Otherwise, there won't be a "second iteration" because he will be gone.

I've seen too many projects where it becomes "the team" against the "client". And in almost all of those projects, they wound up failing and the person who hired the team winds up getting sacked. I have personally experienced that exact situation 3 times.

Something is quite wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

When you have been on the job for two years, presumably to work on the website, and it has not been updated in 8 years. 8 years would means that the last time someone touched it was in 1997. I see so many problems with this:

- You have been on a job for two years without delivering anything.
- You have been working on a major web redesign for two years, during which time, the standards and technologies used have changed dramatically. Com'on even Google and Yahoo have changed their website since 2003.
- Your goal right off the bat was a major redesign. You've noted that you don't have the manpower or the buy in of your manager. One of the benefits of websites is that you can launch over and over again. Your team of two developers couldn't com'on with some changes to the website after two years on a website designed in 1997?
- You were hired for this position. It feels like you are a technical manager and not used to dealing with making business decisions. Find some PM in the company that can work with you at least part of the time to get your house in order.

For every wrong, is a door to a whole host of solutions. Bottom line is that you have a lot of ways to try and help your situation, because you got so much wrong.

staffing varies wildly

[itdood]

I work for a 7 billion $ org, 44,000 employees. We have .5 FTE running our website (me, I'm the IT manager). I outsource most of the coding and design work and I do most of the easy updates.

It's a fairly complex web site, with intranet components (requiring security, SSL), SQL back-end, some MS- access backends, full service employment section, in addition to the display-ad stuff. All coded in PHP. My anual development budget is 50k, the operational budget is only 30k. I've never had a problem, partly because I have a qualtiy company doing my development/design work. I've worked with this rather small company for many years so the process is very efficient.

But I have outsourced application development work to consultant (bearing point to be exact), that didn't go very well. If you outsource, you need very granular policies and procesudres for them to follow and a detailed statement of work. WIthout those they may not even follow industry model practices for design, that's when it gets ugly.

I've always struggled with getting more staff too. As someone mentioned earlier, using brute force to do so will get you no where and even harm your reputation.

Fry's?

[boristdog]

32 retail electronics stores? My guess is Fry's.

I always thought Fry's web site looked like their web staff was pretty much one guy.

With a drinking problem.

Re:Fry's?

[brevig907]

Naw it's not frys, we're kinda like a upscale Best Buy, but we don't sell computers. :)

How many ?

[Anomalous custard]

5 people

You better prove ROI first

[PlainBlack]

As the President of a web applications development company, I can tell you that you absolutely can prove ROI prior to building a web site. And not only can you prove it, I believe it's an absolute must to prove it before you start. If you don't have an absolute measurable objective going into a project like that, no amount of success will be enough to prove ROI. And that's because you had no meaningful data going into it.

Two people

[soliptic]

Me, and my manager.

Hope this helps

[Lord Kestrel]

We have about 150 people directly working on our website, in either a development, maintanence or business role. The site makes anywhere from 3-5 million US a day. Bandwidth is between 150-250 Mbps.