redesigning lclark.edu

meeting

Our launch date is June 8.

So how do you choose a launch date? I don’t know of any science to this. In my mind, the best thing you can do is adopt a pragmatic approach, so that’s what we did. Between Jason and Tonya from White Whale and Morgan, Gwyn, and, we simply assembled around a table in the Trail Room and while eating our lunch, picked the day in about five minutes.

Had you been at an adjacent table, and in the mind to listen in on our incredibly interesting conversation which often dwells upon the nuances of code, scripting and servers, this is how those five minutes went.

We started with some major dates and events. The admissions cycles finish up in/around May, at least for CAS and Law since Grad runs continuously, and the commencements run from mid-May to June 7. So we would either need to be well before or after the May to early June window.

Then, there’s the consideration of how much time we need to complete the tasks needed for launch. There is a lot on the plate, since the back-end of the site is being completely replaced along with the design and content we all see on the front. With only threeish months to late March or early April, we decided it was too soon, so launch would have to be post June 7.

And what about day of the week? I wanted it to be early in the week, so that we’d have the rest of the week to dig through broken apps, bugs, links and the like. I personally feel that no site launch is perfect or you took too long doing it and regardless, even if it is perfect, you should plan time to handle issues that arise. So that meant we’d launch on a Monday.

Since there was no reason to delay longer than June 8, that’s what it became…. 4:58, 4:59, 5:00. (And we’re off…)

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