Last week, my friend Zitong (http://twitter.com/lizitong) and I went to meet up with Zwee, the VP Business Development of SavantDegrees, who is also an Internet Guru.
First of all, we made a simple introduction about our current project, and share our brillant ideas to make him interested. Later, we let him ask us questions about this project, and surprisingly, Â he talked lots of complicated workflow for Internet Projects. In the end, we really confused as we don’t know whether or not he was making simple things complicated. We have no other alternatives, but to write all the ideas and discussions down, to make up our own Start-up Guide which is much simpler than his.
This Start-up Guide is mainly for either consumer project or enterprise project.
1. What are you going to do?
Some people might say that they want to change the world through something, that’s quite okay as they are ambitious. On the other hand, a handful of people might say that they want to discover the social features and make Internet life interesting whereas the others want to move the business cycle to the web, and do e-commerce or marketing via the Internet.
Anyway, just dot down what you are going to do in a small and handy notebook or even save a draft in Microsoft Word, no matter you are flying solo or in a team. The objective should be always short and clear, and you must remember it at all times.
2. What can users do?
The attraction of consumer products is making impression be conversion, a simple and useful statement to describe what can users do is really important. On the other hand, for enterprise Internet products, the customers will always want to know what are the core functions and exciting features, and how does the product increases efficiency.
This statement can be used for homepage design, also for business proposal for investors.
3. Workflow & Mock
Both workflow and mock can be really complicated for enterprise, as they have to build up everything and make a detailed plan. Workflow is designed for user actions, and mock is designed for anything around this project. After which, the model should be out.
4. Development & UI Design
The sequence of development and design depends on the project objective and style. I personally prefer design first. After you’ve finished all the crucial steps above, I think this stage for Internet Project is quite simple. Just as what Zwee has said, 80% of planning and 20% of coding, with a completed and detailed planning, everything will become relatively quite simple.
5. Operation & Marketing
There are lots of useful guides for this stage, I think it’s no need for me to introduce too much, marketing is the best way to make money via Internet. Also, operation includes the process of improving projects.
With these 5 stages or steps, I think a whole workflow should be clear, and every wonderful platform is built through this method. If you are an Internet Project Manager and wants to know how to improve efficiency, I think this simplest guide may help you NOW.