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If you've never been involved in the building of a website for a large company then this might come as a surprise. Getting agreement for so many things would h

by casca 15y ago

If you've never been involved in the building of a website for a large company then this might come as a surprise. Getting agreement for so many things would have taken many people months of time. "Lean Startup" where things don't work on day 1 is not an option. Include focus groups, armies of usability testing, all sorts of integration misery and this doesn't seem a crazy big number. They don't get 4 developers who'll work for 2 years for 12 hours a day for no money.

alexchamberlain 15y ago
4 developers for 2 years doesn't cost $18million...
- cfontes 15y ago
  20 devs/DBA/IT for 2 years would cost you something like 4M, 8M at max(Super Salaries for everybody) ! The costly part is the "Management" which creates the bureaucracy so other people can hang out in the project controlling excel tables while those 20 bastards work their asses off.
  - thomasgerbe 15y ago
    I don't think that includes consultants that helped the design, user experience, and architecture. Since they went with a pretty well known interactive agency, it probably cost them more than three million.
  - omgtehlion 15y ago
    please add taxes and cost of workplace (office rent, equipment, etc)
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
mtrimpe 15y ago
From what I can tell it looks like a fairly decent deal. The site is snappy, visually impressive and with a well thought out user experience, tasteful upsell and in general clear communication. At least it launched and managed to avoid all the pitfalls of corporate politics leading to bad architectural choices leading to a very expensive and poor implementation, which is a much more difficult challenge by itself than most people realize. It's important to remember that: * very few great developers/designers will work for Four Seasons on the cheap. * it'll mostly have been well paid consultants earning $100/hr and up * it is very likely that the project has had multiple iterations to reach it's current state, all hidden behind a single big release.
- DrinkWater 15y ago
  Try deactivating JavaScript and look at the page. For $18M i would expect something else.
  - skrebbel 15y ago
    Guys, why the downvote? Upvoted to counter. It was a fair argument.
  - Void_ 15y ago
    Try W3C validation! How dare they cash $18M and not even produce valid HTML.. Seriously now, what is it, 1999?
    - DrinkWater 15y ago
      There are people who deactivate JS, for personal/corporate/whatever reasons. Shouldn't one serve these customers as well? Or does this feature cost another $1.5M ?
      - gms 15y ago
        Those people are in the extreme minority. They are not worth the time and effort.
zachinglis 15y ago
I can't say WHO, but I've been leading the UX on a large newspaper site. There's huge feedback loops, tens of people to sign off per page and a ton of usability testing. They have their own in-house development team. I can bet you we've not come anywhere close to that and the site is absolutely HUGE. I suspect somewhere someone was given this as a budget and they had to spend it, or lose it.
- casca 15y ago
  The in-house dev team is the secret here. You can pay each person $60k/year and they have management who will say "No, that's not possible with our resources". Compared to the Four Seasons outsource model where anyone can say "I want that feature" and will be told "Sure, it'll cost an extra $1m of someone else's money".
markokocic 15y ago
You forgot various change request, often contradictory by different departments, countless changes to things already signed, specified, implemented, tested and deployed, at least three starts from scratch because of different "visions" ...
djhworld 15y ago
Most of the costs probably came from expensive consultants/contractors during the analysis phase. I'm going to take a punt and say that Oracle is probably involved somewhere down the chain. Whether it be Weblogic or OracleDB, I bet they had a whole load of consultants to come in long before development started

by casca 15y ago

alexchamberlain 15y ago

4 developers for 2 years doesn't cost $18million...

cfontes 15y ago
20 devs/DBA/IT for 2 years would cost you something like 4M, 8M at max(Super Salaries for everybody) ! The costly part is the "Management" which creates the bureaucracy so other people can hang out in the project controlling excel tables while those 20 bastards work their asses off.
- thomasgerbe 15y ago
  I don't think that includes consultants that helped the design, user experience, and architecture. Since they went with a pretty well known interactive agency, it probably cost them more than three million.
- omgtehlion 15y ago
  please add taxes and cost of workplace (office rent, equipment, etc)

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

mtrimpe 15y ago

From what I can tell it looks like a fairly decent deal. The site is snappy, visually impressive and with a well thought out user experience, tasteful upsell and in general clear communication. At least it launched and managed to avoid all the pitfalls of corporate politics leading to bad architectural choices leading to a very expensive and poor implementation, which is a much more difficult challenge by itself than most people realize. It's important to remember that: * very few great developers/designers will work for Four Seasons on the cheap. * it'll mostly have been well paid consultants earning $100/hr and up * it is very likely that the project has had multiple iterations to reach it's current state, all hidden behind a single big release.

DrinkWater 15y ago
Try deactivating JavaScript and look at the page. For $18M i would expect something else.
- skrebbel 15y ago
  Guys, why the downvote? Upvoted to counter. It was a fair argument.
- Void_ 15y ago
  Try W3C validation! How dare they cash $18M and not even produce valid HTML.. Seriously now, what is it, 1999?
  - DrinkWater 15y ago
    There are people who deactivate JS, for personal/corporate/whatever reasons. Shouldn't one serve these customers as well? Or does this feature cost another $1.5M ?
    - gms 15y ago
      Those people are in the extreme minority. They are not worth the time and effort.

zachinglis 15y ago

I can't say WHO, but I've been leading the UX on a large newspaper site. There's huge feedback loops, tens of people to sign off per page and a ton of usability testing. They have their own in-house development team. I can bet you we've not come anywhere close to that and the site is absolutely HUGE. I suspect somewhere someone was given this as a budget and they had to spend it, or lose it.

casca 15y ago
The in-house dev team is the secret here. You can pay each person $60k/year and they have management who will say "No, that's not possible with our resources". Compared to the Four Seasons outsource model where anyone can say "I want that feature" and will be told "Sure, it'll cost an extra $1m of someone else's money".

markokocic 15y ago

You forgot various change request, often contradictory by different departments, countless changes to things already signed, specified, implemented, tested and deployed, at least three starts from scratch because of different "visions" ...

djhworld 15y ago

Most of the costs probably came from expensive consultants/contractors during the analysis phase. I'm going to take a punt and say that Oracle is probably involved somewhere down the chain. Whether it be Weblogic or OracleDB, I bet they had a whole load of consultants to come in long before development started