Creating a web product is same as creating other type of products, it requires a certain management framework and process to develop and deliver the product on time and suitable to the market. Adobe has a great resource on managing a web production. Its framework is not as formal as traditional software development ones, but it has number of iterations to guide through the whole production cycle: discover, define, structure, design and prototype, build and test, launch and evaluate. Discover is probably an useful step, and creating user scenario is probably one of the important steps to create a successful web app:

… Understanding the user—their demographic information, goals, and habits—is a key part of developing user profiles. To take the process a step further, we need to identify the actual situations or scenarios a targeted user might experience in a typical day as he or she attempts to achieve different goals on the site. The user profile describes the user, while the user scenario describes how that user interacts with the site.

Put yourself once again in the user’s shoes and think of the actual online and offline circumstances surrounding the user and the task. Creating various scenarios within the site should take you through several tasks, and lead the user down different paths. Perhaps in one situation the user wants to buy a CD-ROM online for a gift. Perhaps another user wants to browse through new artists to determine if he wants to download a sample clip. Whatever the situation, it’s important to think about the user, the task, and the situation together in order to truly gauge the optimal path for the user to follow…

Website Production Management Techniques – [Adobe]

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