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When starting out on a new Umbraco Project it's really important to know and communicate what features and other requirements you have.   There are many ways of communicating these requirements, but here at Carbon Six Digital, we use a spreadsheet called the Prioritised Requirements and Traceability Matrix.  Long name, but easy idea. We’ve previously talked about producing a Prioritised Requirements List, which is a crucial first step in commissioning a new Umbraco site.  In this post, we look at the other side of this template, the Traceability Matrix. The purpose of this side of the template is to track the…

Most business projects involve some element of risk - negative events that may impact the project budget, quality or timescale. Web-based Umbraco projects are no different - their success often depends on how well the team manage and resolve risks so that their effects on project delivery are minimal. At Carbon Six Digital we use a pretty simple process of risk management. Our Risk Management Process  Risk management of web projects, like any other, is just the methodical identification of events that might occur to impact the project, assessment of how big the risk actually is and then putting plans…

When starting out on a new Umbraco Project it’s really important to know and communicate your requirements and your desired features. There are many ways of communicating these, but here at Carbon Six Digital, we use a spreadsheet called the Prioritised Requirements and Traceability Matrix. Long name, but easy idea. First the requirements list. This is a methodical list of all the features the new system must incorporate alongside other factors, known as non-functional requirements, such as security and performance requirements. The functional requirements are often best articulated as a “User Story”. The list should be Prioritised so that the…

When you’re commissioning a new Umbraco site, it can be useful to start planning for the task of testing what has been delivered by your developers.  A planned and thoughtful approach to User Acceptance Testing can reduce the time taken and ensure better coverage of the system as well as one that is ultimately better at the end. Developing a Strategy for Acceptance Testing  During the early product planning stages, it’s worth discussing acceptance testing to understand the agency’s standard approach. Will they develop the system in an iterative way and expect you to contribute to acceptance testing during…

If you’re going to build a website or app you need to face facts: it’s going to have bugs.  Bugs have existed in software since Grace Murray Hopper found her punch card program failed because a moth got trapped in the reader.   Bugs are a fact of software life, because humans are fallible. We make mistakes, we misunderstand specs, we write algorithms incorrectly, or we use the wrong variable.  We believe that instead of trying to write perfect code, we should spend as much time trying to write a good trap.  Testing, therefore, is the saviour of poorly-written code. Approaches…