Speaker: Matt Van Horn, Application Architect & Website developer

Attendees of the October meeting learned the differences between web applications and web sites; what the roles of the creative, the technical and the administrative functions do and why you need all of them; and the five phases of a web development project —Thinking, Planning, Executing, Testing and Deploying.

Matt spent a lot of time explaining the five phases, when and where a project could fail and why. He also touched on the concepts of Pragmatism, Teamwork, Personal Responsibility and Morale and how they provided a practical framework from which to work. The animated and curious audience asked questions throughout the presentation which made for a very lively discussion of the issues.

Matt stressed the need for standards to insure that everyone involved with the project will speak the same language. This makes it easier to test the site, leverage the knowledge of others and it enables more parallelized development.

For example, he suggested a simple data document to start the process rather than a wireframe. This allows the graphic design, HTML/CSS coding and the Programming to be done concurrently, where issues relative to each can be addressed with less conflict. He also encouraged the use of standards when naming files, diagram objects, bug reports and CVS comments.

Finally he discouraged the use of email to discuss issues, (Yes!) turning to more appropriate tools like an intranet, Wiki, Basecamp and Trac to make knowledge transfer and documentation of results easier.

He left us with a sense of the critical nature of testing in all its forms; why it’s often ignored and how that results in a less useful site. What the benefits of automated and functional testing are and why companies should invest time and money in developing professional testers.

A copy of the presentation can be found at his site http://www.mattvanhorn.com under Communicate.