Aaron Pedersen - Flash Platform from Start to Finish - Working Collaboratively Using Adobe Creative Suite 5 [2010, PDF, ENG]

1 Why Projects Fail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
What Failure Looks Like . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
State of the Three Ts: Technology, Tools, and Teams. . . . .4
How to Deliver Successful Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
2 The Project Spectrum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Small Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8
Medium Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9
Large Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Not All Projects Are the Same . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3 Understanding Roles in a Project . . . . . . . . . 13
External Roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Client . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Design and Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Putting the disciplines together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Quality assurance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Build and release . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Getting Roles to Work Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Defining a method for collaboration . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Using the DACI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4 Defining Project Phases . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Build and Release . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
PART II I PLANNING
5 High-Level Vision and Team Organization . . . .29
High-Level Vision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Who is the project targeting? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
What is the business problem? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
How should the problem be solved? . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Why should it be solved this way? . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
When should it be solved? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Team Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Defining stakeholders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Determining team roles in the kick-off meeting . . . . 32
Scope Review and Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Understanding constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Conducting user research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Creating use cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Feature Set Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Feature breakdown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Prioritization and dependencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Initial estimates and next steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Summary Checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
6 Setting Expectations for Your Project . . . . . . 39
Building a Project’s Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Getting your team involved . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Exploring the types of specifications . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Creating a specification using Adobe Buzzword . . . . 41
Discovering Team Roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Creating a contract between design and development . 43
Developing a Project Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Overview of project plans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Project plan formats and tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Summary Checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
7 Tuning and Adjusting for Success . . . . . . . . 49
Choosing the Right Technologies and Tools . . . . . . . . 50
Is your publishing size important? . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
How video-rich is your product? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
How data-centric is your application? . . . . . . . . . . 51
What deployment environment is suitable for your
application? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Adjusting Your Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . S4
Refining the feature set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Modifying project scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Adapting team roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Assigning the Order of Tasks: Waterfall vs. Iterative . . . S5
Waterfall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Iterative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Summary Checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
PART III I DESIGN
8 Planning Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Defining the Intent of Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Identifying the emotion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Picturing the emotion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Documenting the emotion and action . . . . . . . . . . 63
Defining rules to design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Giving Your Creativity Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Architecting the interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Don’t just take our word for it . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Syncing with your team . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Summary Checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
9 Iterative Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Adding Details to Your Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Mapping the user flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Creating your linked wireframes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Designing the Visuals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Designing through wireframes and comps . . . . . . . 78
Working efficiently with Creative Suite design tools . . 88
Preparing for the I-landofl" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Keeping a tidy project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
.......and other