As a digital project manager who came up the ranks through marketing and web, I am often asked my opinion on applying standard SDLC (system design life cycle) methodologies to web development. In other words, can the same PM processes that manage, let’s say, a large technical database project be used for managing a large advertising website?
As I’m sure you can guess, I am not the first to try and answer this. Check out http://www.learn.geekinterview.com/it/sdlc/sdlc-web-development.html for another post that seems to generally say “yes, they are related.”
The post above does not satisfy me. It’s too simplistic and doesn’t get at the heart of the issue. The primary difference between software and interactive marketing projects is not the project itself. Of course SDLC can be used to manage system planning, architecture, execution, testing and maintenance. It’s not the tasks being performed, its the PEOPLE doing the tasks that differ. Marketing projects introduce a new layer of team members and stakeholders, ones with subject creative ideas and preferences. The real question is can SDLC be used by interactive marketing teams like it is used by traditional software development teams.
This leads to an obvious discussion of different methdos of SDLC – waterfall, spiral, agile, etc – and how each rates as a possible method for each type of development. Stay tuned for part 2!
RightStartPM 