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I've learned two things that are extremely important when it comes to web design projects. 1. You HAVE to have a process that moves a project along or you will hit problems down the road. 2. You must follow the process do or die .. however, if your process isn't working for a project, on't be married to it. That sounds like an oxymoron, but in reality it's very useful. What you have to understand is that while a process is ultimately important (think blueprints for a builder), they are a tool rather than the end goal. Some of us creative types fall into one ditch where we play it all by ear, and hope it turns out okay. And you know what, some projects lend themselves to that. I'm not going to pretend they don't. Others of us practical, engineer types fall into the other ditch and sacrifice too much time and money adhering to a process and it's myriad of documents just to prove you must. I'm going to take the high road in the middle and live by my two rules above. I come to this conclusion after many, many projects. I've seen them lost in hopeless confusion because no one knew where they were going or what the client expected. I've also seen a project choke on it's own documentation and end up costing too much in resource paychecks as they spend most of their time updating paper work. This may be fine and even essential in larger projects with complex issues. Now I'm not saying that just because a project's goals are to come in under time and under budget that you shouldn't use a process. On the contrary, if you don'have a respectable process of implementation in place you will almost guarantee a failure to meet either of those goals. What I'm implying is simply this: love the project, not the plan. When you pu the plan first, you're entering a level of bureaucracy even the government might shudder at.
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