What it is:
An audit involves evaluating the current state of a website, application, or system to identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement. A review may focus on specific components such as performance, security, user experience, or code quality.
Why it’s important:
Audits help uncover hidden issues, ensure compliance with standards and provide a foundation for informed decision-making. They also help identify areas where improvements and modernisation is needed.
Process:
Define the scope and objectives of the audit
Gather data through tools, user feedback and stakeholder interviews.
Analyse findings and document them
Present recommendations and prioritise actions.
What it is:
Scoping involves defining the project’s goals, features and deliverables. Planning includes creating timelines, allocating resources and setting milestones.
Why it’s important:
Clear scoping and planning ensure that everyone is aligned on expectations, timelines, and budgets. It reduces the risk of scope creep and helps manage resources effectively.
Process:
Engage stakeholders to define project goals and success criteria
Identify key features and functionalities
Estimate time, cost and resources
Create a detailed project plan with timelines and deliverables.
What it is:
Information architecture refers to the structure and organisation of content and functionality within a website or application. It includes navigation, labelling and categorisation.
Why it’s important:
A well-structured IA improves usability, helps users find information quickly and supports search engine optimization (SEO). It also ensures consistency across the platform.
Process:
Understand user needs and behaviors through research.
Create wireframes or sitemaps to outline the structure
Define navigation paths and labelling
Test and refine the IA with user feedback.
What it is:
Implementation is the actual development of the website or software based on the plans and designs. Testing ensures that everything works as intended and meets quality standards.
Why it’s important:
Implementation brings the project to life, while testing ensures reliability, security and performance. It minimises the risk of errors in production.
Process:
Develop the website or application according to the design and specifications.
Conduct unit testing, integration testing and user acceptance testing (UAT).
Fix bugs and optimise performance.
Deploy the final version to the production environment.