ŽVPL 3.0 or how to “f* up” a web site relaunch [wwwh notes]

Here are my rough notes from lecture by Gregor Zalaznik and Davorin Pavlica, founders for ŽVPL at @wwwh with original Slovenian title of Spletne urice #100: ŽVPL 3.0 – kako “zaj***ti” projekt (ali ?esa ne narediti pri procesu prenove).

ŽVPL redesign took 3 years+. Here’s what they learned:

the project began and ran on beer. [presenters buy beer for whole audience]

Image by Drunken Monkey via Flickr

short history of ŽVPL

lots of drinking around Ljubljana until they’ve figured out that there could be a project from these drinkings
firstly it was ran on hand coded HTML each time. Frames and all that
then they’ve figured out some database stuff until it crashed whole thing once again and page went offline for next 3 years

how not to run a project

project manager should be one person only. Shared responsibility is totally foo.
prepare documentation in digital form. They’ve prepared most of the documentation around beer in different bars. Bartender arranged for a notes paper and pen and that was most of the the documentation.
pick a framework: CMS, framework, custom? Just choose one and stop wandering around.
decide roles and deadlines. It’s good to know this from the beginning so everyone knows what they should take care of.

production – or you can’t live from fame and fortune

release soon and release often. They didn’t follow it and they’ve been doing it for a long time and then the whole project quickly gets outdated.
they’ve changed 5 programmers in the lifetime
the project was pro bono and you easily lose team members
ideas without implementation are not worth anything
time is an issue
technology goes on very fast and unless you release soon and often, it runs you over and you keep reworking

Q & A

: Image by Mikael Dalkvist via Flickr

What project management software did you use? They’ve used Basecamp from 37 Signals.
iPhone version? It’s on the TODO. No deadlines.
How do you recruit people? We don’t. If someone is interested they will find you.
What does ŽVPL run on? On Union.
What was positive side of things? You learn and meet lots of people. It was nice to have a release out the doors and say that you’ve finished something. Secondly, you learn not to cancel too early and that it’s good to talk to like-minded people as they encourage you to finish the project.

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