There are a lot of posts in the blog about how performers behave when creating web projects, a lot about the malicious behavior of customers. All do one thing, but there is no understanding.
As a result, many projects fail to meet deadlines, require large investments, and as a result, their quality and economic effect from the launch are worse than expected. What to do?

What to do to order the site correctly

Correct - means to get what you want, in the right time and with sufficient quality of the product and services.

0. Formulate your goal
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What do you want to get?
What audience is your product designed for?
What do you want to achieve in a year or two?
What tasks will you solve online, which - only in the offline part of the business? How can these events change in the next year or two?
What changes in the proposed products and services you predict?
What opportunities for managing a web product will you keep for yourself, which ones will you give to employees, which ones will you assign to contractors?

The result of the wording of the goal should be the project concept, setting the task at the top level. It is presented in 5 minutes, on paper takes exactly 1 sheet. Do not try to write a multivolume TZ, at the moment it is not necessary.

The main questions are: who, when, what and for what purposes will be done using the future web project.

1. Choose adequate performers

Adequate - it means taking for their work the normal human payment. Estimate how many man-months you need to produce the product you need, estimate the price of payment for 1 month of labor of a qualified specialist in your region and add taxes, rent, communication, advertising and a reasonable profit.
Adequate - means having a coherent portfolio and oriented on the market of web services. The portfolio must have at least one job that is similar in complexity to yours.
Adequate - means having a vision in those business problems that you plan to solve and are able to express your opinion.

upd . There is a fairly simple way to assess the real complexity of the site. The fact is that the site is rarely occupied by less than 3 people, so the complexity must be calculated in person-days or person-months. How to find out: ask questions to the person with whom you are discussing the future of the project: who will work for how long. The answer might sound like this:

The project manager deals with your project on average 2 hours a day during the month, the designer spends 2 working weeks, the programmer spends 2 working weeks, then the project manager with the employee responsible for the content spends the full working week on preparing and posting content.

Total 1.75 person-months.

2. Conclude an agreement

The contract should be read, if possible with a lawyer, to draw the attention of contractors to everything that seems to you incomprehensible, superfluous, incorrect, not registered. No one will specifically throw you, but it is important that you and the contractor equally understand all the essential details. Feel free to ask for important moments for you to be recorded.
Especially important are the terms, cost, copyright, warranty, technical support and reuse of what they do for you.
The market situation is such that the conclusion of a specific sensible agreement is useful to all. Cases of fraud are unknown to me, but conflicts that are rapidly developing up to the end of a relationship, the death of a project and a massacre due to misunderstanding are very common.
The contract must necessarily indicate: what, when (from ... to ... or to ...), by whom and for what money will be made. In large contracts, each question is covered by the application (amounts, TK, schedule, interaction sequence, responsible persons).
If you work with a freelancer, after all the correspondence make one letter, which describes the work, deadlines and payment, and send it to him. He must answer: yes, that's right. This will be a contract.

3. Get ready to promote

Many, many things you must do. It:
- transfer of all materials available for you and necessary for the project in a digestible form. A heap of yellow paper or “Petya in stock, he will tell you everything” - to the firebox. Respect the contractor.
- making decisions. The contractor is obliged to advise you, suggest options, tell without embellishment about the pros, cons, features and consequences of actions (the better he does it - the higher his level), but you decide. Depending on the model adopted, you will either make the main decision “the contractor is responsible for everything, up to a percentage of profit” or you will consciously choose between joomla and drupal and the colors of all banners. It is important that you make a decision consciously, with confidence that you do not have a cat in a bag, and in any case are responsible for your decisions. Do not take responsibility for the contractor.

4. Delegate authority

- contractor. Do not try to control every step. Do not require a daily report and do not ask, "Why does it leave here so much?" Do not try to check and verify the quality of each comma. The situation in web technologies is such that on the whole your task will be solved, and here are some specific instructions that you find simple and natural to prove almost impossible to accomplish. After all, you have chosen professionals? it means they are not harmful and do not fill the price, but they say it is: it is impossible to do this or it is better not to do it . Trust the professionalism of your chosen people.
- to their employees. If your project is any big, you will not work alone. You may have a deputy, wife, secretary, photographer, merchandiser, or full-time designer. Decide in advance on what you and only you will decide, and what your colleagues will do. It is possible to close all decisions only on oneself, but then the quality will deteriorate, and the terms will increase. If you have given authority - try not to take them back. Do not terrorize the project with impulsive decisions.

5. Do not forget to take work and pay

Very often, the project freezes at the 85% ready stage, but it’s full of bugs and it’s all over the place. Then the developers plow, the project manager is nervous, the customer is waiting with fear. If so - give people a week, they will do a lot.
If you occasionally see uncritical errors, inaccuracies, something annoys you, but in principle corresponds to the task, goals and common sense, show honesty and generosity, accept and pay for the work.
You are not working with these people for the last time, and the worst thing you can do is pull the acceptance to the last comma. First, the next time you will be billed with a margin on the category of "zadrot, + 100%", and secondly, often such are the "latest bugs" do not matter, but require efforts comparable to the entire project. Go for a compromise.

What not to do

0. Agree to proposals in the style of "understood, tomorrow I will do."

The option is “well before the session for sure” and offers whose price is lower than the market average by more than 2 times. The chances of getting a low-quality product, three times late and with an error on the main page, are sharply increasing. Free cheese - well, hereinafter.

1. Give 100% prepayment

Even if there is a contract and conscience, the contractor of cowardice, laziness and greed can leave you alone with the unfinished project at the time of crisis, proposing to sue.

2. Start without prepayment

People who are ready to start working without an advance payment, either do not value their work, or trust you unlimitedly.

3. Sign without reading

The consequences are obvious. The 90s have passed, you will not put a designer on knives, but you will have to pay for the alteration of what you have received, and twice with money and lost time.

4. Considering that the site is a panacea for all ills and a direct path to a million dollars

Any web project is nothing more than a tool. Special, specific, but tool. He will not replace neither the commodity expert, nor the director, nor logistics, with the accounting department. With proper goal setting and planning, he is able to save a lot of strength by taking on the routine and mechanical operations of these characters. Pay for it.
5. Release the situation out of control.

Always know who is responsible for each question. When creating a website, you will interact (possibly through intermediaries) with a variety of services and organizations. You do not need to know the admin host personally, but you need to know exactly who to ask. And let him know too. And be sure that he knows what you know. And so on.
The paradox is that often people require coordination of each hair on the logo, despite the fact that they do not distinguish the domain from the provider, and in the case of problems-overlays, they are completely unprepared.
You must either understand the distribution of roles in the project yourself, or have a trustee who controls the situation.
Let it be the same contractor who makes the site, then speak responsibility, give authority and pay for this work.

Everyone is interested in the quality of the project. Let us work in harmony.