Project Process
One of the peculiarities of the NAIOP project was that the project launched partially from the imperative to recreate the functionality of a large amount of custom development from previous site generations, some of which was not well documented. This was somewhat challenging as it meant unpacking years of rather complex development, and converting it into functional requirements that could power new development—often with improvements or consolidation of user experience. Similarly, TBG also delved into the organization’s AMS system and hosting environment, getting familiar with the overall technical ecosystem.
The balance of the project used our traditional "hybrid waterfall" process—a very structured set of contingencies that guides clients through phases of discovery, strategy, information architecture, design, functional requirements, template production, prototyping, content migration and training with increasing levels of overlap among these areas as the project progresses from initial wireframes.
Over the project, the process had a special emphasis on architectural work of both a front- and back-end variety. Deploying an evolving prototype in NAIOP's chosen hosting environment, we spent considerable time tuning DMS database interactions and perfecting load times on various complex components. The project had a unique theme of balancing a variety of different types of development for a mix of quality of experience and overall site performance. The project also pushed some non-standard DMS scenarios involving tightly defined audience niches that were interesting to consider and implement.