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Overview

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This website discusses optimizing website project life time costs. It describes using a static site generator for developing and deploying websites. It is based on Iterative Development and Web Component Technologies.

The basic idea of Iterative Development is to develop a system through repeated cycles (iterative) and in smaller portions at a time (incremental), allowing iterative development teams to take advantage of what was learned during development of earlier parts or versions of the system.

Web Component Technologies enable creating reusable custom elements, with their functionality encapsulated away from the rest of the code, and utilized in website development.

Iterative web development teams working together can help optimizing website costs and lower some of the difficulties creating websites.

Difficulties​

Creating and maintaining websites that meet users needs are difficult, complex, and time consuming.

Website life time cost are higher if defects are not mitigated early.

Slow​

The Google PageSpeed Insights website reports on the performance of websites on both mobile and desktop devices, and provides suggestions on how pages may be improved.

Google reports mobile website pages load within 22 seconds on average. However, 53 percent of mobile users will leave a page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load.

Content​

People visit websites for content. They have little interest in how the content is created or how it gets to their screen. Everyone wants websites pages to load quickly and conforming to their screen size. The website look and feel, users experience, functionality, also needs to be consistent and complement the content.

Iterative Development Teams​

Website development teams working together deliver their work to other teams during the website life time.

The slightest errors or security issues will require remediations sometime during the life time of the website.

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Iterative website development Teams

  1. Iterative website development enables the Define, Design, Develop, Deploy and Maintain teams to be operational at the same time creating, testing, and remediating defects.

Defect Remediation Costs​

The highest cost over the life time of website projects is remediating defects.

Content and software defects cost less when found early, as this chart shows:

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Defect Remediation Costs

The early defect detection mechanisms built into iterative development and a static site generator are:

  • vscode editor tool extensions continually check for syntax and other errors

  • Fast refresh live-editing quickly showing changes and any runtime errors while typing

  • Team members deploy their copy of the project repository with their changes, to private websites where stakeholders can see them and give feedback. See Preview Deployments

Minimum Viable Product​

The first goal of website development projects is a Minimum Viable Product.

It is a way to understand whether the website project idea will work or not. It is a stage in website development where the must features are implemented and ready to test with end-users. It gives feedback about the positive aspects and shortcomings.

The next steps are adding the want features, until stakeholders agree the website is production quality and ready to be deployment.