eHealth Articles & White Papers

Incremental Web Site Improvement: Learning from Agile Development and Lean Six Sigma Methodologies

Linda Barnes - Vice President of Business Development

As we begin a new year, many hospital marketers are looking at their websites and determining goals for 2010. If your site is more than a couple of years old, you might be inclined to start over  and certainly there are times when a complete redesign is warranted. But if you have limited resources for the year, perhaps a more incremental approach would meet your goals.

What is Incremental Redesign?

Incremental redesign breaks up the set of envisioned changes into smaller pieces that can be executed more quickly. This approach allows individual changes to be implemented and then measured so adjustments can be made or the change can be rolled back.

The concept of incremental redesign is similar to the Agile approach in software development or the Lean Six Sigma theory of continuous improvement.

Agile Development: Geonetric adopted Scrum, an Agile development methodology, about two years ago. The concept is based on iterative development that allows for rapid delivery of high-quality software. The shorter development allows for more frequent adaptation to evolving markets, more frequent inspection, better alignment of company goals with customer needs, and improved accountability.

Lean Six Sigma: Lean Six Sigma blends two concepts: Lean, which focuses on eliminating waste, improving speed, or reducing costs; and Six Sigma, which focuses on eliminating defects by reducing variation in the process. The combined concept offers a balanced process and recognizes that, optimally, organizations shouldn't concentrate on just quality or just speed to the detriment of the other. Processes are constantly evaluated and improved in the light of their efficiency, effectiveness and flexibility.

Approaches and Benefits to Incremental Redesign

An incremental approach can focus on any one or a combination of the following:

• Design: A design refresh can range from small visual tweaks to a complete replacement of the homepage. Design changes are typically rolled out without changing the underlying information architecture of the site.
• Content: Often, website managers will take a section-by-section approach, evaluating and updating content for a single section, department, or service line rather than for the entire site. With this approach, new sections are available faster and new content or content organization can be tested before being applied across the site.
• Transactions: Forms or entire transaction processes can be re-engineered to streamline the process for users and improve task completion, or new functionality may be added to the site. Again, it is often useful to break these changes into discrete pieces so the impact of individual changes can be measured.

Tips for Success

If you are going to adopt an incremental redesign approach, there are some concepts that will help you to be successful:

• Plan: Even when making a series of quick changes, it's important to have a vision of where you're headed and be proactive in including your stakeholders. Beginning with the end in mind will ensure better results with less rework.
• Understand: Spend enough time with your stakeholders to understand the business objectives and enough time with your site visitors to understand their needs before jumping to solutions. Otherwise, it's easy to lose track of what's important.
• Prioritize: When you take an incremental approach, make sure the changes you're choosing to do first are the ones that will provide the most value to your organization. And make sure your methodology allows you to say no or delay lower-value activities.
• Build: Start with a good software infrastructure so incremental changes can be performed easily. Typically, this means using a Web Content Management System (CMS) that gives you the ability to scale changes through sections of the site and control design through templates, styles, and presentation layouts using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) rather than through tables. 
• Measure: Be sure you have tracking tools in place and have the resources to manage the results. Incremental redesign is often iterative - "change, measure, repeat." Analytic tools don't have to be costly, but they do require some work to provide real value and uncover what's working and what's not.
• Change: It's important to learn and improve during the project. If you don't see the improvement you'd hoped for or if you don't have the correct resources involved, be flexible and willing to make adjustments mid-stream.

Adding Value One Step at a Time

As you can see, there's a lot Agile development and Lean Six Sigma methodologies can teach website managers about making improvements incrementally. As much as most of us wish we could just build the site of our dreams, too often we are faced with limited budgets and resources. Incremental design helps you keep moving your site forward in a way that adds real value and doesn't break the bank.