Evolving the Team
How companies are juggling resources and learning from past experiences.
By Amber Howle
With the growing acceptance of Internet technologies as serious business tools, companies have evolved their Web sites over the years to provide better applications and services to their customers. Executives are no longer using sites as simple channels for publishing company information and colorful marketing pieces. New development tools and e-commerce packages give developers the potential to build useful, interactive sites that can bring in extra revenue or even save money in the long run.
The teams behind the sites have also evolved over the years. It's rare these days to find major corporate sites being built and maintained by a handful of HTML coders and graphic designers. Instead, Internet development teams are treated as important departments with significant budgets to allocate and serious revenue goals to meet. Some teams have even become businesses in and of themselves, offering their skills as outsourced services to other organizations in need of development and design help.
To find out more about what Web teams have learned over the years, Web Techniques spoke with five companies in different industries. With technology adoption leveling off and layoffs becoming a necessity for most businesses, the teams we met with are all looking more closely at their internal structure and processes. While most have made significant changes as a result of the market, some have not changed at all, finding that their original plans have carried them through the best and worst of times.<>
