a jaundiced eye: saner heads
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saturday, april 12, 1997.
Stackable Propeller Beanies
Anyone building a Web Services team must attempt to fill several roles, which I'll attempt to outline below. The key is to find people who aren't greedy about their knowledge - people who are willing to learn and to share what they learn with the rest of the team. I was lucky enough to have found a round dozen people who fit that description, when I was building my team, but there are many who struggle daily with the challenges involved in successfully assembling such a team. I see posts to mailing lists and newsgroups on a regular basis, asking for help in either defining their own role as multi-propeller-beanie webmaster or trying to delineate the individual roles. Having been through this, I figure I'll share my experiences.
Just a quick note - in early 1995, I was tapped to start and run a Web Services department for a medium-size software and systems integration company in the Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina, USA. Over eighteen months, I and my team built an internal web of seven servers, "preview" and production, for development projects and core services, and a public web server. I was blessed with a team of bright, creative individuals, whose willingness to share their experiences was a credit to their sense of the importance of shared responsibility, a key to any successful team. I wish anyone embarking on such an effort the best of luck - it was easily the most gratifying two years of my life.
Any decent Web Services team, whether on the internet side or those involved in building intranets, must fill the following roles - regardless of whether the roles are filled by one tremendously talented person or by several more focused individuals, or even supplemented by outsourcing. As the team grows, it is suggested that the roles be carved out into single-person job descriptions. For beginners, however, this may not be financially viable. If you're the webmaster, expect to assume at least one (and probably more than one) of the roles outlined below:
Business Analyst
The business analyst is required to get to know the company with whom you are doing business, whether for WWW or intranet services. They come up with a workable model of the business goals, processes, and culture that can be handed off to the content developer and graphic artist to faithfully reproduce that model in hypertext. In certain (external or outsourced) environments, the BA could also be called an account manager - they are the front line contact with the client(s) - and are to be held accountable for any communication (or lack thereof) between the client and the Web Services team. A strong desire to provide the best, most concise statement of marketing goals or other business requirements is required, as is the ability to translate the technical into easily understood terminology and associate such translations with practical, achieveable goals is essential for the business analyst.
Content Developer
The content developer is responsible for both taking existing content and migrating it to the web and writing new content. Conversion and layout are the primary responsibilities of the content developer. They should be familiar with the various word processing tools, HTML editors and graphics applications, and have some idea of how the web server works. A copyeditor's stringency is a good quality for a content developer, as is a sense of copyright issues and the importance of consistency and the preservation of corporate identity. A people person may be the best choice for a content developer, and the ability to politely explain why bells and whistles are inappropriate for a site intended to serve the hearing-impaired is important as well.
Site Architect
The site architect is responsible for developing the physical directory structure and logical structure encountered by the visitor, and for working available content into this framework. Navigation on a grand scale is the realm of the site architect, as is the definition of clear and distinct labels for the site's contents. They should be well-versed in the server's capabilities, as well as the peculiarities of the operating system environment. It is expected that the site architect be able to provide tools (with help from the programmer and sysadmin) which allow the easy management of the site's contents as well as their placement. Where the content developer deals with pages, the site architect deals in terms of document chunks, longterm maintainability and scalability of the site, and its longevity. This role requires close cooperation with the content developer(s) and business analyst(s), to ensure that the site they architect adequately reflects the goals of the project or the mission of the department, and to provide for the best means of updating and maintaining the products of those goals.
Site architects, content developers, and even the systems admins and network analysts make up what is commonly referred to as "webmaster". If you're filling all of these roles yourself, kudos to you.
Programmer
The programmer is the one who provides the others with automated solutions to their problems, whether providing gateways to legacy systems or kewl Java applets and JavaScripts. Should work as closely as possible with the "webmaster(s)" and business analysts - depending on the situation, the programmer may take direction from other business units or projects within the company, those who may have the most at stake or have the best level of familiarity with the systems that need to be accessed. The ability to keep apprised of new developments within the web community is absolutely essential, and therefore a person who does not parse the term "burnout" is the best choice for this position.
Graphic Designer
The graphic designer is responsible for developing the look and feel of the site in question, including all graphics, style and layout guidelines, and corporate presentation standards. They should be familiar with all manner of graphics production and conversion utilities and should have a knowledge of style sheets and a good sense of the site architect's role as well as that of the content developer. Some people believe that the graphic designer should focus on graphics to the detriment of HTML, but I do not believe this to be the case. In the rare case, graphic designers should be able to assume the role of both content developer and site architect, and should even consider calling themselves information architects.
Systems Administrator
The systems administrator should be intimately familiar with the operating system being used as a web server platform and should also be capable of programming and server configuration. Backups, source control, security, and performance issues should be enough to keep the sysadmin from sleep. Knowledge of the Internet, its protocols and the services provided via those protocols is essential. It is also desirable for the sysadmin to have a good sense of the complexities of hypertext, as the mindset of the best sysadmins should be a superset of programming, maintenance, and systems management - being able to project the future uses of a system and plan accordingly is a must. Many ISPs suffer from having sysadmins whose outlook is focused on backups, DNS, email, security, and other necessary pieces of the web services puzzle, without being able to deal appropriately with the vagaries of dealing with content. Being able to whistle the handshaking sequences of a modem is not as important as being able to see into the future and plan accordingly.
Network Analyst
The network analyst, or engineer, is responsible for providing adequate bandwidth for the web services team. Usually this is a role filled outside of the web services team, but I consider it so important as to deserve special mention. If you have the best site on the WWW or within your organization, it will not matter unless people can access the resources when they want - without having to wait for ill-configured routers, clogged pipes, or saturated ethernet segments to pass your packets on. If your ISP is not delivering the performance that you expect, go yell at the network folks ;^)
Web Services Manager
The manager of this crazed bunch of people is responsible for providing mentoring, project management skills, budgetary sense, political savvy, appropriate training, business development, and other essentials. In the best case scenario, they also need to keep track of all developments in the field, including tools, new media, market trends, and everything else that the rest of the team should be keeping up to date on but isn't ;^) Most importantly, the manager of a web services team needs to be able to define and communicate a vision which is capable of being adopted by the entire team - whether it be the use of powerful tools to meet an internal business goal or to sell the most web-borne widgets of anyone else. Without a center, the circle doesn't hold.
I've developed a graphical representation of the ideal web services team, which I call the "interaction diagram". The idea is that contiguous roles should be intimately involved with one another on a daily basis. The web services manager oversees every aspect of the team's daily duties, whether directly or indirectly, and so underlies the other team members' roles as designated.
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Steven Champeon
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© 1997-2001
Steven Champeon. All rights reserved.
All slights reversed.
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