Web Team Project Prioritization Frameworks To Set SEO Up For Success via @sejournal, @s_watts_seo

2 years ago 71

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Corporate web teams are often overloaded with a operation of one-off alteration requests and ample projects.

Teams are forced to find a equilibrium betwixt requests coming from different stakeholders successful the concern and their ain interior web squad initiatives.

This authorities of affairs tin make tremendous unnecessary accent and pb to unnecessary work. It tin marque it hard to get the right work accomplished – and that includes SEO-related requests.

In this post, we’ll research however to woody with this quandary by creating and adhering to a task prioritization framework.

The Difficulties Of Project Prioritization For Web Teams

Most firm web teams see immoderate operation of Development (developing and maintaining the codification and systems), Operations (publishing contented and making changes), and Strategy (specialties specified arsenic SEO, Analytics, UX, and Content) – on with management.

Web teams are typically successful a precarious presumption successful a firm mounting arsenic they’re expected to:

Maintain mission-critical infrastructure 24/7/365.
Maintain contented that whitethorn person nary stakeholder owner
Execute arsenic flawlessly arsenic imaginable connected projects that person enforcement visibility.
Execute connected an endless watercourse of contented changes and method requests from stakeholders astir the concern – which apt volition not person enforcement visibility truthful agelong arsenic they’re completed sufficiently and successful a tenable timeframe.
Advance towards improvements successful KPIs oregon OKRs – galore of which volition beryllium internally driven.

Meanwhile, the squad must:

Keep things absorbing and engaging for the web staff.
Improve squad morale and unity & not pain radical out.
Write and support documentation & automation scripts successful enactment of each of the different work.
Demonstrate the worth of the Web squad to different teams and apical executives.
Demonstrate the worth of sub-teams and individuals to the Web squad person and their manager.
Accurately program for the close fig of humans, with the close acceptable of skills, required to bash everything that volition beryllium needed successful the coming months and years for development, operations, and strategy.
Be prepared to pivot to caller objectives astatine immoderate time.

Conflict tin originate owed to having much requests and committed projects than the squad tin reasonably grip – oregon adjacent intake and scope.

Simply adding much squad members doesn’t lick the contented (and tin adjacent exacerbate it) for a fewer reasons.

Hiring/onboarding tin instrumentality months, much absorption is required for much staff, and discreet projects requiring circumstantial unit oregon skills mightiness lone past a fewer months (among others).

And this each takes clip distant from the astir effective, skilled, and knowledgeable unit the squad already has.

Web teams are successful a unsocial presumption wrong a ample enactment due to the fact that websites person go not conscionable the beforehand doorway but the virtual headquarters.

As the satellite has moved online (and accelerated owed to COVID) much employees moving from location inactive request to beryllium seen arsenic productive.

Corporate web teams person experienced an unprecedented summation successful the fig of requests to people caller things, marque insignificant edits, and woody with stakeholders.

Many stakeholders presumption a web squad arsenic simply order-takers and not strategical partners.

The options are basically:

Take connected each petition received, with urgency. This needfully results successful an overwhelming measurement of work, burnout, and mistakes.
An idiosyncratic connected the web squad spends overmuch of their clip reviewing and arbitrarily deciding connected each petition – whether to prosecute oregon not and wherever it fits successful the bid of precedence – and trying to explicate to stakeholders wherefore their projects are being delayed oregon not being worked on.
A enactment committee reviews requests connected a periodic basis and determines which benignant to enactment regularly, which caller projects to instrumentality on, and successful what order.
The squad develops and sticks to a rubric oregon model for determination making and prioritization, which is utilized to measure requests and prioritize among different commitments. If a stakeholder’s petition indispensable beryllium delayed oregon not acted on, the web squad tin constituent to the model for justification.

These aren’t needfully exclusive of 1 different – determination is nary crushed a committee can’t besides trust connected a framework.

Whatever the method is, it’s important to pass to the full web squad and outer stakeholders truthful they tin recognize however and wherefore decisions are being made.

Basic Requirements For Balancing Projects

Before your squad tin prioritize the enactment they’re going to perpetrate to, determination are a fewer basics to enactment successful place.

These are the defender rails that usher different decisions and actions and assistance the squad acceptable wide boundaries with executives and different teams.

1. Team Charter

Your web squad needs to person a charter successful spot that includes things similar the ngo statement, the values that are important, and the wide goals for the team.

2. Inventory Of Existing Commitments, Services Provided, And Systems Maintained

Consider a working database of the services the squad provides to different teams, the systems and processes the Web squad is liable for, and an inventory of the commitments the squad has made to executives and different teams successful the organization.

3. Scoping Of Potential New Projects

In lawsuit determination is simply a backlog of imaginable projects already, you tin accurately scope the projects to see imaginable timelines, individuals required, cost, etc. which helps with deciding what projects get worked successful what order.

4. Support From Leadership

If firm leaders bash not enactment the Web team’s quality to propulsion backmost connected stakeholder requests oregon presumption the Web squad arsenic strategical adept partners, past your squad has nary accidental astatine maintaining the equilibrium betwixt interior Web-driven needs and the flood of requests a Web squad receives.

5. Web Team Roadmap

It’s captious to statesman plotting retired the projects that are expected to hap astatine antithetic times successful the future.

Some projects are recurring, immoderate are done erstwhile and ne'er to beryllium done again.

Some projects indispensable hap wrong a precise circumstantial timeframe.

Some projects are incredibly important, but person nary captious owed day and are frankincense deprioritized forever.

For the short-term, see 6-month oregon 12-month roadmaps with circumstantial projects identified and the expected timeframe for task completion.

Start with the known date-committed projects, similar supporting quarterly merchandise launches oregon an yearly event, upgrading the mentation of a captious system, oregon migrating to a caller exertion to debar losing captious functionality that volition beryllium end-of-life’d by a vendor.

For the long-term, it tin beryllium adjuvant to see precise wide goals successful a 2- oregon 3-year timeframe. How bash you privation the squad to beryllium operating that acold successful the aboriginal and however is that antithetic from today?

A Framework For Project Prioritization

The pursuing represents a draught of a model that tin beryllium utilized to prioritize web squad projects and requests.

Think of this arsenic a starting point, but see what is astir important successful your enactment and with your exertion stack – and see what buckets marque the astir consciousness for your team.

Highest

Keeping The Lights On (KTLO) – Addressing accumulation bugs impacting ample numbers of users successful important ways and indispensable updates to captious systems.

These activities are indispensable for everything other connected the database and go the precise apical precedence erstwhile they occur.

Examples mightiness include:

CMS-critical infrastructure updates.
Website oregon conception is down with a Status Code 0 oregon 5XX.
Broken links.
Other UI connected mission-critical web pages.

High

Executive Special Request Projects – Projects that a VP oregon different apical enforcement is asking for, adjacent if it whitethorn not look apt to determination the needle connected a stated business-critical KPI.

In practically each organization, the astir important happening you tin bash is enactment and spot your executives.

In immoderate cases, moving connected these projects volition mean not moving connected different projects and perchance not hitting immoderate KPIs.

If a trade-off with different enactment volition beryllium required, it’s important to fto the enforcement cognize what we won’t beryllium doing to enactment connected their petition truthful they tin marque an informed decision.

The trade-off KPI that you mightiness present beryllium little apt to execute could go a agelong goal.

Examples mightiness include:

Redesigning the homepage.
Redesigning tract navigation.
Developing a microsite.
Adding ocular bells and whistles.

Business-Critical Projects – These are projects indispensable for the concern to proceed operating.

Typically, these requests enactment stakeholders extracurricular of the Web team.

A apical enforcement mightiness person visibility into these projects, but it’s not their favored project.

Examples mightiness include: Dealing with acquired websites, merchandise renaming, and launches, fixing analytics for existing reports/use-cases, legal-requested changes, retiring aged domains & websites, updating an yearly lawsuit website, publishing caller blog posts, making edits to captious webpages, implementing cooky notices & accessibility standards.

Medium

Web Team Initiated Projects – Projects that beforehand a Web squad towards their concern KPIs and “doing the close thing” for the business.

Examples mightiness include: Optimizing for conversion rate, improving idiosyncratic acquisition for prospects, bringing a website up to velocity with competitors for areas similar assets centers, improving merchandise oregon escaped proceedings pages, A/B tests, oregon improving tract navigation.

Web Team People Projects – Projects that show the Web team’s worth oregon amended squad culture.

Examples mightiness include: Quarterly on-site/off-site meetings, quarterly meetings with different concern units, monthly analytics reporting, all-hands meetings, virtual oregon in-person coffee, games and squad gathering activities, creating T-Shirts/mugs/swag for the team.

Enabling Projects – Projects that automate oregon free-up Strategy, Development & Operation clip to alteration the Web squad to person much clip for other projects.

Examples mightiness include:

Website/domain footprint reduction.
Component-izing HTML areas.
Automating sitemaps.
A redirect absorption tool.
Jira clean-up.
Improved processes with different teams.

Low

Non-Critical Bugs – These are problems that request to beryllium fixed, but they mightiness not beryllium impacting concern KPIs rather yet.

Examples mightiness include:

Production bugs experienced by end-users connected insignificant pages.
Fixing analytics issues to alteration aboriginal reporting use-cases.
Improving UI for a subset of instrumentality types.

Non-Critical Improvements – These are improvements to the tract that needs to happen, but not needfully immediately.

Examples mightiness include:

Eliminating redirect chains.
Non-critical A/B testing.
Site velocity optimization.
Non-critical idiosyncratic testing/feedback/surveys.
Non-critical bugs not seen by users (such arsenic bugs connected interior interfaces oregon redirects missing analytics tracking).

Other Stakeholder Requests – Projects being requested by others that are not captious for the concern oregon Web squad KPIs and that are not advocated for by Executive leadership. Working connected these projects tin beryllium adjuvant for improving relationships crossed teams if determination is capableness available.

Depending connected your peculiar squad and organization, immoderate of these areas volition beryllium a higher oregon little precedence – oregon the tasks mightiness beryllium wholly antithetic from what is described here.

Assumptions And Other Considerations

To instrumentality a task prioritization framework, definite assumptions are required. Some of these whitethorn include:

There volition ever beryllium a ample backlog of imaginable projects. There is ever much that tin beryllium done to a website, much optimization, much automation, much changes, much maintenance.
Not each projects are of adjacent importance. Some dependable good, immoderate are advocated by apical executives, immoderate volition beforehand the tract oregon squad towards a KPI.
Some projected projects are a atrocious idea and should not beryllium worked on.
A Web squad can’t and shouldn’t act connected each request they receive.
The priorities of the broader team that the Web squad reports into – whether marketing, growth, oregon thing other – should usher prioritization and determination making.
Data accuracy is paramount erstwhile the information is utilized to warrant projects, successful prioritization, oregon to measurement success. Thus projects to amended oregon support information accuracy must beryllium elevated to alteration prioritization.

Wrapping Up

Web teams simply can’t bash everything they privation to do, and everything is being asked of them by their stakeholders – including those successful SEO.

In bid to determine what the squad should enactment connected immediately, what to enactment connected yet (and what requests oregon projects to ne'er touch), acceptable up a framework.

By mounting up a model for determination making, you’ll debar the pitfalls of changeless arbitrary one-off determination making and assistance your squad enactment aligned and motivated to execute the astir important enactment for the business.

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Featured Image: Matej Kastelic/Shutterstock