Some thoughts on Agile Development for Library Web Site Design

Gone are the days of big web site re-designs and launches. A very poignant presentation from a Web Services Librarian at Arizona State University talks about agile development when planning and maintaining a Library Web Site.

screen grab from presentation

The argument is that we should be continually improving and evolving our web sites without the very "late 1990's" web site re-launch parties. Instead the presentation encourages continuous improvement to the website incrementally rather than in one hit.

via Logic Boost

This great diagram by Logic Boost shows us the benefits of making small changes and slowly building the web site up rather than the plan-relaunch strategy (waterfall).

This methodology fits in beautifully with the concept of "continuous improvement" within a business setting. The idea that regardless of what you are working on, there will always be improvements. That you never actually get to the "ultimate" web site, because you are continually improving.

Most of the diagrams for agile methodology don't have an evaluation step in them. If you are going to slowly improve your web site, consider doing periodical evaluations of the site to ascertain whether your site is achieving it's objectives.

Some further reading:

• Roger Black has some great design tips for web sites. This book was written when the internet was a mere infant (1997), but his wisdom still holds some merit. I have a copy of his famous book on my shelf and many of his rules for web site are still relevant. Michigan State University has a PDF of some of the material from Web Sites that work: https://www.msu.edu/~jdowell/pdf/WebSitesThatWork.pdf.  Good article about good design, Black, R. (2007). Help me redesign the web published in MIT Technology Review: http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/407804/help-me-redesign-the-web/
• Jacob Nielsen was another pioneer and his usability web site focuses on how to get the most from our users through well thought out design of our pages. His website has his archived articles about usability and design. http://www.nngroup.com/topic/web-usability/
• 50 questions to evaluate your web site: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/50-questions-to-evaluate-the-quality-of-your-website/
• Best Practices Web Site by Michael Tuck, a great article on how to go about designing a good web site: http://www.iraqtimeline.com/maxdesign/basicdesign/principles/prindesign.html

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