Hi,
1) dot project
2) a wiki and/or a forum
3) UPS.. just kidding :) I'm not sure what you're asking.

good luck!

No offense.
Why they hired you as lead web designer if you not sure what you doing?

Best, Dmitry

dmitryseliv, the creative group that hired me is a small business with 7 employees. Only one of them is a designer and she is not comfortable with designing for the web. They have worked with freelance web designers in the past, but like I mentioned, never had a web designer in-house. I can't say for sure, but I am almost positive that they couldn't afford to hire a project manager (higher salary) and a designer at the same time, even if it might seem like that is what's necessary. Down the road, I'm sure this will happen, but they are still growing.

Moving on. They interviewed a number of people and ultimately decided on me. Now, just because I have only worked freelance doesn't mean that I don't know what I'm doing. How are people supposed to move up in the business world? I have a process that I follow and will continue to follow if no better solutions come about (highly unlikely). I'm sure my process will completely change once I begin there, but I was simply looking for things that I might prepare for or use to further my knowledge or working in-house with a team that doesn't have much experience with the web. It's not like they hired a complete newbie, but yes, of course I feel that there are things for me to learn from others who have a bit more experience than I do.

I really hope this clarifies things because I am not asking specifically how to do my job. If you don't have anything to contribute, please don't feel like you need to comment. However, I honestly do value the advice from anyone willing to give it, and I will gladly do the same.

regardingdesign,

I have been in similar situations to the one you describe over the years, and now find myself working for a huge multinational company, as a senior member of a large (50+) in-house development team. Despite the setting and client being quite different here than in your situation, the process we follow here is remarkably similar to what I used to use for my freelance work, and for when I was working for (much) smaller clients.

3stripe is correct that initially, you want to have a fairly specific definition worked out between yourself and your client as to the scope and specification of the project. For both designer and client, it is important to have a definite set of goals defined before work starts - For you, because it will help you both in the work itself and the obvious time management issues therein, and possibly in justifying design decisions later, and for the client in that with the goals of the project defined, they can see what you are working towards, why you have chosen to do things in a particular way and, importantly, where the scope of the quoted project ends, and extra billable works would begin, should they want more than they originally thought (as many clients do).

Once the project has started, I agree that dotProject can be a useful tool, but thats all it is - A tool to help you with the job of project management. The most important thing is to be able to look at the project specification, projected timescale and progress so far at any given point and be able to say "yes, I can make the deadline, with x days to spare" or "no, I don't think I can make the deadline, because of xyz. I need to get in contact with the client now to explain this" The simple fact is that no tool will be able to make anyone a good project manager, its just a means to an end really. It can be handy to have reminders that certain things need doing by certain points, but I would suggest that it is really only necessary on larger projects with more than one designer involved, as tools such as dotProject are generally more useful to the project manager than to the designer working on the project (generally, you should know where you're at if you're managing a team of yourself).

As for deliverables, well, I tend to work to the clients requirements. I have instituted a practise of producing "snapshots" at regular intervals here at my place of work, so that after each major stage of development, there is a build that represents the progress at that point in time. These snapshots work incrementally, so we build up from snapshot 1, adding features and making alterations until we have things to a point we feel it is worth releasing a new snapshot build (on very large projects like the one I am currently managing and working on, we are producing a snapshot build at least twice a week). These snapshots are great, because it gives both you and the client a record of the steps that have been taken, and how the job specification has changed throughout the development process (We have the problem that features get added, then someone wants to remove them, then someone insists that they are added back in again, and so on...). This can be very helpful, because not only to you have a code reference for these elements in these snapshots, but also a way of justifying bill increases due to the changes made. (Clients, on the whole, wont argue if you can "remind" them of exactly how much extra work they have created!).

Each of our snapshots comes with a readme file, detailing what it contains, whether each page/feature is complete or not in this build, and what items are yet to be included, and will be inserted in a later build. Also, there is a changelog in the readme file which gives a concise overview of the alterations / additions made to each page. Again, all of this is mainly to cover your own back, but it also gives you a handy reference should you forget what build a certain feature was implemented in.

Thats how I tend to work. I dont know if that will help you, at all, but I thought I would post anyway.

Cheers

David

David, that was exactly what I was looking for, thank you. It just helps me to compare my process to what others are doing, and possibly develop new ideas along the way. And speaking of new ideas, thank you for presenting the readme idea. That's something I will look into implementing in my upcoming projects.