In what I hope is an indication of the timeliness of this blog on web teams, Jeffrey Zeldman has just posted an article about web divisions – the lack of them and the need for them.

Whilst I’m not sure that I fully agree with the mandate that every serious website requires a web division, I agree whole-heartedly with the sentiment that this is an issue long over due for some more serious consideration.

Where web teams sit in an organisation is an important factor that often has a significant impact on a site’s identity. Unless the web team has it’s own division, a web division, it’s highly likely that the skill of the web team will reflect the purpose of that division. In many cases that leaves a gap both for the business and the site’s users.

The other side of the argument is that for a large number of organisations, their website/s don’t justify an entire division. For the sake of argument, I’m defining a division as an organisational group that has representation at board level, whereas a team does not.

I don’t think there is a simple one size fits all solution, however I think it’s definitely something we, as members of web teams/divisions need to think about more and discuss.

In order to progress this discussion I’ve started a google group on web teams. There’s nothing there at the moment, but if you’re interested, sign up and we can start to get this debate out in the open.

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 at 12:06 pm | Categories: web divisions, web teams

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