Creating a business case for my new website
Over the past few months I’ve been debating resurrecting my old website. I’ve had some form of web presence since the mid 90s when the best browser out was Netscape 1.1, but about 5 years ago I found I had less and less interest in maintaining a personal site, and between life and a career change, there has been little time for the web development services that I used to provide. Finally I froze my site in June 2008, and haven’t looked back since.
Today, I decided to apply what I’ve learned over the past few years as a business analyst and see if there is a business case for resurrecting my site.
For this entry, I’m going to follow the recommendations of Prince2 for the content of a business case.
Reasons:
Over the years I’ve built up a reputation at work and with friends as someone that is knowledgeable in web development, project management and business analysis, when searching my name under Google my current site appears on the first page, but is woefully out of date and does not give a good impression of my current skills or knowledge. So my main reason is pride, I either need to make the decision to update the site, or put it out of it’s misery.
Options:
- Terminate my current site. With my current career path, do I need a website at all? Or can I use one of the social media sites such as LinkedIn or Facebook?
- Pros: little effort, will no longer have to pay hosting costs or domain registration fees. Already have LinkedIn and Facebook accounts.
- Cons: I currently have a fairly high Google ranking for my site, showing up on the first page when you search for my name, if I close the domain, and later decide I do need a site, I will have to rebuild my ranking. If I rely on LinkedIn and Facebook I’m at their mercy of their longevity (remember myspace?), and their rules for content and structure
- Patch my current site. Simply update design and technology, but leave the content alone.
- Pros: little effort, allows me to update my web development skills.
- Cons: without new content, the site will continue to lose relevance, and will not represent or assist my current career path.
- Replace my current site. Update the look, feel, and content of my site to better represent my current career path.
- Pros: Allows me to update my web development skills, and will allow me to demonstrate, and hopefully improve my skills in project management and business analysis.
- Cons: Time, I will need to create and maintain the design, technology, and content for the site. Cost, I will need to continue paying hosting and domain registration fees, and there may be additional costs depending on how I choice to develop and maintain the site e.g. build, buy, customize, or hybrid.
Expected Benefits:
I believe there are three expected benefits that drive the creation of any type of publication: financial gain, recognition, and/or knowledge:
Financial gain: do I want to make money, either directly by selling products or services, and/or indirectly by gaining an audience and recognition, and then generating profits through advertising, speaking engagements, associated publications, and/or merchandising.
Increased recognition: of myself, or an idea I believe in, do I want to be noticed, become a leader, or share my thoughts, actions or ideals, either for the benefit of my ego, or from a belief that others could benefit from what I know?
Increased knowledge: do I want to harness the knowledge and experience of others for my personal improvement and enjoyment.
For my analysis I’m using the Prince2 definition of a benefit as “any measurable improvement that is perceived as an advantage”.
Currently, my main interest is knowledge, next, by creating a site instead of simply commenting on other sites, I hope to gain some recognition, and yes, eventually I hope for financial gain.
Expected Dis-Benefits:
This is a term prince2 came up with, it’s awkward, but at least it’s clear.
Time involvement: this site will take away from my personal time.
Costs:
There will be the fees for hosting and domain registration, otherwise, the major cost will be in terms of my personal time. The time for the content will be the most significant, and I have enough technical skill to either develop my own design and technology, or tap into the free/open source community without of having to purchase a solution.
Major Risks:
There is little risk to increasing my personal knowledge, but there are several major risks associated with both recognition and profit by creating a website.
- Success, if the site is successful, the time requirements (reviewing and responding to comments) and hosting costs (bandwidth) could become excessive. This risk will not be mitigated, the benefits of success out weigh the negatives.
- Audience hijacking, if I succeed in getting recognition, it is possible that I could also gain the notice of groups that want to hijack my audience for their own benefit, anything from spamming advertisements, or code injection, to trying to take over the entire site. This risk can be mitigated through best practices and the implementation of captcha or a review process for comments.
- Profit sharing, if I succeed in generating a profit from the site, and the success of the site is in part due to the site’s contributors, will the contributors request a portion of the profit? This risk can be mitigated by the creation of a terms of use for my site, clearly describing the rights of contributors.
Based on these options, my current decision is to split the work in to multiple projects, the first to put a transitional site, which will provide the minimum solution replace my current site, and provide a forum for the discussing new topics, and so I can also discuss options for the long term solution as they are developed, and then any additional projects to actually build the long term solution.
I don’t want to plan to far ahead for the simple fact that I’m not fully committed to the project yet, so in my next entry I will plan out the tasks that will give me a better idea of the scope of this project.