One of the first stages of an organizational web project is to define the web team. Each team consists of a minimum of the following roles*:
The vision person has overall say so on what the purpose of the web site is and has both veto and approval power. This is generally a department chair or director of a program.
The liason acts as the conduit of information between the project manager and the organization. They continue to be the contact for web updates, guidelines, training sessions, and alerts.
The content team are the information brokers in an organization. They gather all of the information that is added to the web site and update this information on the actual webpages. Generally, content teams consist of program directors, advisors, and support staff.
The project managere makes sure all members of the web team are communicating, provides a central contact, and helps information to flow in the right direction.
This is an artist who designs the graphics for use on the web. They are also responsible for the overall design of the site and making sure there is a visual flow.
The HTML person/s puts together a flow chart of the information that the web team wants on the site and makes it functional on the server on which it will be published. They focus specifically on coding.
Most sites include forms and database information. The application developer programs custom applications and user interfaces for these systems.
Besides running standardized validation tests on a site, it is ideal to have a person physically interact with a site and applications within the site with some of the more common accessibility tools such as JAWS and Magic.
A technical writer's primary responsibility is to effectively communicate a textual information as a usable web formatted message. Technical writers are responsible for creating documentation that is accurate and complete, but as concise as possible, and as easy for the intended readership to understand.
*Note: Sometimes people will share a role with someone else, and sometimes one person fills numerous roles.
