By Winmark Business Solutions
An implementation plan is an evolved content plan that includes the following: scope, time line and budget for your company's Web site development project.
- Overview — This includes the purpose and audience information from the content plan. It also provides a condensed description of the project and its general scope.
- Scope— Here you'll find a description of your project, the tasks to be completed, the proposed technical approach for dynamic elements and any limitation/process parameters inherent to the project. The content summary and feature list from the content plan should be integrated into the scope of the document.
- Time line—Although the time lines for rolling out Web sites vary depending on the size of the site and the scope of the project, a 12- to 14-week time line is common. A typical time line includes planning, design, production and testing milestones. Time lines often need to be adjusted to reflect the workload of staff, the selected vendor, and related project dependencies.
- Budget— While creating the implementation plan, staff will provide estimates for time, outside suppliers and required resources for completing the project. These costs are then combined to create an overall budget to implement the project.
The production time needed for building your company Web site only reflects a portion of the overall cost, typically half of the budget. Costs associated with planning, design and testing also need to be included for an accurate budget.
Of course, drafting a Request For Proposal (RFP) and hiring a Web site developer to complete the project will affect the implementation plan.
About the Author
Winmark Business Solutions (WBS) is a free Web site for small businesses and entrepreneurs containing over 6,000 pages of business-critical information and downloadable tools at www.WBSonline.com. WBS is a division of Winmark Corporation, a multi-brand franchisor with nearly 900 franchise locations in North America. With over 25 years working with small businesses, WBS draws upon years of experience to bring important small business articles, information, tools, forms, checklists, calculators and downloadable forms to the small business owner to help their business grow. WBS contains over 6000 pages of business-critical information all available at www.WBSonline.com.