We came across an excellent article about strategies for Web 2.0 application.
In summary the points raised were:
1. Start with a simple problem (during analsis)
2. Create prototypes as early as possible.
3. Get people on the network to work with the product prototype rapidly and often.
4. Release early and release often.
5. Manage your software development and operations to real numbers that matter.
6. Gather usage data from your users and input it back into product design as often as possible.
7. Put off irreversible architecture and product design decisions as long as possible.
8. Choose the technologies later and think carefully about what your product will do first.
9. When you do select technologies, consider current skill sets and staff availability.
10. Balance programmer productivity with operational costs.
11. Variability in the productivity amongst programmers and development platforms each varies by an order of magnitude.
12. Plan for testing to be a larger part of software development process than non-Web applications.
13. Move beyond traditional application hosting.
14. Build upon an Open Source foundation.
15. Consider mobile users as important as your regular browser customers.
16. Search is the new navigation, make it easy to use in your application.
17. Whenever users can provide data to your product, enable them.
18. Offer an open API so that your Web application can be extended by partners around the world.
19. Make sure your product can be spread around the Web by users, provide widgets, badges, and gadgets.
20. Create features to make the product distribute virally.
21. The link is the fundamental unit of thought on the Web, therefore richly link-enable your applications.
22. Create an online user community for your product and nurture it.
23. Offer a up-to-date, clean, compelling application design.
24. Load-time and responsiveness matter, measure and optimize for them on a regular basis.
25. User experience should follow a “complexity gradient.”
26. Monetize every page view.
27. Users’ data belongs to them, not you.
28. Go to the user, don’t only make them come to you.
29. SEO is as important as ever, so design for it.
30. Know thy popular Web standards and use them.
31. Understand and apply Web-Oriented Architecture (WOA).
32. Online products that build upon enterprise systems should use open SOA principles.
33. Strategically use feeds and syndication to enable deep content distribution.
34. Build on the shoulders of giants; don’t recreate what you can source from elsewhere.
35. Register the user as soon as possible.
36. Explicitly enable your users to co-develop the product.
37. Provide the legal and collaborative foundations for others to build on your data and platform.
38. Design your product to build a strong network effect.
39. Know your Web 2.0 design patterns and business models.
40. Integrate a coherent social experience into your product.
41. Understand your business model and use it to drive your product design.
42. Embrace emergent development methods.
43. It’s all about usability, usability, and usability.
44. Security isn’t an afterthought.
45. Stress test regularly and before releases.
46. Backup and disaster recovery, know your plan.
47. Good Web products understand that there is more than the Web.
48. Look for emerging areas on the edge of the Web.
49. Plan to evolve over time, for a long time.
50. Continually improve yourself and your Web 2.0 strategies.
