OVERVIEW

Websites can be developed in-house (internally), out-of-house (externally), or using both. With in-house development, a company designs and builds a website using primarily its internal staff. Out-of-house development is when a company goes outside and commissions another company to build its website, in a client vendor relationship.

A fundamental factor in the management of a website development project is the business or employment relationship among the players. In the interest of tax collection, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has gone to great lengths to distinguish between an independent contractor and an employee. The distinction can be ambiguous in some situations, so the IRS has established a list of checkpoints that swing the balance one way or another. The guidelines specify that a contractor is responsible for the output and is not supervised or trained in how exactly to proceed toward that outcome. This is an illustration of how rules and customs governing interpersonal relations differ depending on whether the person is an outside contractor you ve hired, a coworker from another department in your company, a direct report, or a peer. In short, an in-house project manager does not have the same control over a contractor that he or she is likely to have over an employee.

Most of the time, Web projects involve a mix of in-house personnel and contractors. Certainly large projects do. So many skills are involved in putting together the pieces (e.g., writing, programming, graphic design, and network administration) that a company usually goes outside for some...