P.M. Entry - Half way through Evaluation "On the Job"

As we agreed at our production meeting before half term we would all compile an evaluation for the half way point of the assignment.

At the very start of the assignment we had we had been put into groups where we discussed among other topics, all of our strengths and weaknesses so we could decide the team roles.

As I am the eldest and have had experience in dealing with customers in my job I found myself in the position of Project Manager. I wanted to have this role from the start, as it would force me out of my comfort zone and would hopefully result in a more rewarding experience.

Chris would be the Developer and Julian would be the designer/ P.A.

13th September unlucky for some, me perhaps as I was up for doing the pitch for the two jobs that were on offer, generic sports and a children's nursery.

When it came to the preparation for the pitch, I must admit I didn't plan it very well, my first thoughts were that we should all have an input and therefore each contribute for our area. But as it came close to the day before the pitch the rest of the members of the team expressed an opinion that it would be better if I should do it on my own, which I agreed too.

When we came to this decision we put a plan of action together to get all the information needed for the deadline. I have to admit that I was happy that we all pulled together, with a lot of late night file swapping and MSN messages we got the job done.

I was pleased that we won the pitch to build the sports web site, the details were unclear regarding what was involved in the web site but I was sure our team could carry out the task. The site would be called the athlete development program and all we had was a rough site map from Mark Helme who is the course leader.

I assumed from the start that this type of project would have data that needed to be updated on a regular basis like the match results and league tables, so the idea of having some form of content management for this was a necessity. It would also prove to be one of the biggest headaches for the first half of the assignment, due to the fact that we will be hosting the site on the college server, we were unsure of the requirements needed to do this.

After several meetings with the college webmaster Dean I was unsure of the best method to use for making the site easily adaptable for the client, Chris had explored several solutions for this so I decided that he should see the Dean himself, as he would be building the site. This proved to be beneficial as Chris has a more in depth understanding of the technical side of web development.

The outcome of it was that Chris will build and validate the site using HTML extensions then will change all the relevant extensions to ASP. So Dean can then add the correct functionality to the specific pages to make them adaptable.

The design of the site was done by Julian, who after carrying out competitive analysis came up with a simple clean design. As the site will be part of the college we had to take certain considerations into the design, as there is a top navigation with drop down buttons we had to use a side navigation to avoid confusion for the user. For the client meeting we decided to show two different colour ways, the first was grey with orange and the second was a dark blue with a lighter tone for the highlights.

During the early part of the production process Mark had been in contact with the Photography students at college to take the images for the player profiles, we managed to meet up with them at the start of October to talk through the requirements for the site.

I thought we could also use some images of the students training instead of the Video that Mark wanted and play them in a Flash movie on the homepage, this would add a much more professional feel to the site than using video.

I have largely relied on Harriet to liaise with Mark to arrange times and dates for the shoots, although up until now there has only been one photo shoot. I feel that we are really lucky to have their input which will add an extra element to the finished site.