Website project management: lessons learned from leading high-stakes web projects

Feature illustration by DALL-E and Kevin T. Boyd CC0

The timeless challenge of managing modern web projects

Whatever it is you are doing, you probably can’t do much about it without a website. Today a website is more than just an online presence; it’s a dynamic platform that has to balance performance, security, accessibility and SEO while serving its stakeholders. Ensuring web projects stay on track-delivered on time, within budget, and without compromising quality-is a complex endeavor. This is where a nuanced understanding of successful website project management becomes indispensable to modern business.

Throughout my career, I’ve led web teams and worked across various sectors, including startups, a SaaS B2B in finance, higher education, and government agencies. At Signifyd, I rebuilt and rethemed the WordPress website, then went on to build a team of web developers for the website that helped drive business to a $200M yearly run rate. At Stanford Medicine, I spearheaded the redesign and management of over 600 departmental and group websites, creating a unified infrastructure that saved the institution over $3 million in projected costs. Along the way, I’ve learned a thing or three about project management for web development without a formal PMP certification.

In this guide, we’ll explore:

• The essence of website project management
• Key responsibilities of a web project lead
• Essential skills, workflows, and tools for managing complex projects
• Common challenges and strategies to overcome them
• Building career paths in web development project management and web design project management

Whether you’re a developer stepping into a team leadership role, a designer managing technical projects, or a business owner aiming to optimize your web presence, this guide offers strategies and insights mostly drawn from my firsthand experience.

What is website project management?

Website project management is a balancing act. You need a structured process to plan, execute, and maintain web projects, but you also need the flexibility to adapt when things don’t go as expected-because they won’t.

A web project might start with a simple request: “We just need a landing page.” Then someone asks for interactive elements. Then multilingual support. Then a CRM integration. Suddenly, your “quick project” is a months-long initiative involving multiple teams, endless revisions, and an ever-expanding project scope.

Keeping a project like that from spinning into chaos is what web development project management and web design project management are all about. While knowledge of web technology is important, understanding what motivates people – who may or may not report to you – and to get them to collaborate and deliver on time is what ensures your success as a manager.

Unlike general IT project management, which often deals with infrastructure or software development, web project management focuses on delivering functional, user-friendly, and scalable websites that meet specific business goals. The key challenge? Bridging the gap between business needs, design vision, and technical execution – without losing sight of deadlines, budgets, or reality.

Key components include:

1. Project scope and project planning – Defining goals, deliverables, timelines, and gathering technical and other requirements
2. Process definition – Defining processes, to avoid long-term redundant effort, support iteration and promote learning
3. Team coordination and rituals – Managing developers, designers, SEO experts, and stakeholders and running project meetings at least weekly
4. Project milestones – Ideally you have an idea when each major step will be completed, when to check in with agents of the process, and when to raise red flags on progress
5. Risk management – Identifying potential roadblocks before they disrupt the project
6. Budget and resource allocation – Managing time, talent, and technology efficiently
7. Testing and quality assurance – Ensuring performance, security, accessibility, and user experience standards
8. Post-launch maintenance – Monitoring analytics, optimizing performance, and iterating based on data; building a post-mortem or retrospective into every major project is also wise

I started as a designer who learned to code. If you’re a builder like me, web project management can be deeply satisfying-seeing an idea take shape, go live, and deliver results is a thrill. But there are pitfalls: misaligned expectations, scope creep, technical debt, stakeholder indecision. If you’re leading a web development project – whether by choice or by necessity – let this post be your guide, and we hope, your inspiration.

Core responsibilities in website project management

Web development projects can be beautifully executed or spectacularly disastrous, and the difference almost always comes down to how well they’re managed. The best project managers don’t just hit deadlines – they make sure the right things are being built, by the right people, in a way that won’t fall apart the minute the site goes live. And they don’t wait for disaster to strike, they are always looking ahead, behind and side-to-side for surprises, blockers and complications of every kind.

Web development project management isn’t just about Gantt charts and sprint planning – it’s about navigating the chaos of competing priorities, shifting requirements, and unexpected roadblocks while keeping your team focused and your stakeholders happy.

Here’s what that looks like in the real world.

Get ahead of problems: Prioritization, scope creep, and the Panic Curve

Like every project, a website project is a negotiation of priorities, constraints, and trade-offs-and that negotiation is ongoing. If a project plan derails, it’s rarely because of a single catastrophic failure. More often, it’s a slow accumulation of unresolved issues: unclear priorities, unchecked scope creep, and stakeholders who wait until the last minute to weigh in.

These challenges tend to fall into three major friction points:

• Prioritization friction – When no one agrees on what’s most important, teams waste time working on the wrong things
• Scope creep – The project keeps expanding, pulling in new ideas and features that were never planned for
• The Panic Curve – Stakeholders disengage early, then swoop in with massive, last-minute changes right before launch

These forces are always at play in web development. The key is not eliminating them, but managing them effectively so that they don’t derail the project.

Authority, delegation, and why prioritization friction can sink your project

Photo illustration by Firefly and Kevin T. Boyd / CC0*

The success of all project management hinges on the authority of the project manager. I’ve worked in organizations where the top leader managed the projects themselves, and while that was effective for project execution, it also distracted them from other critical priorities. Ideally, the PM has direct or delegated authority to set priorities and schedules, make decisions, and enforce processes-but that’s not always the case.

Ambiguity around authority creates a chaotic, reactionary work environment. In some organizations, a PM can seize authority by proving competence and getting buy-in from the team. In others, the PM gets whipsawed by competing stakeholders, unable to enforce direction because no one empowered them to do so.

Some friends of mine worked at a startup that outgrew its informal project management style and hired a PMP to run the marketing stack. They were skilled, experienced, and highly capable-but they weren’t given the authority to actually set priorities. In an attempt to solve process issues, they pushed for a new ticketing system, switching from the company standard to a flashy new platform with more capabilities…and more complexity. Unfortunately, the problem was with people, not software. Changing systems didn’t fix the core problem: no clear prioritization framework, no defined project intake, project scopes poorly defined, and no real process discipline. It became every stakeholder for themself. Eventually, they gave up and returned to the more basic, company ticketing system, having lost considerable traction.

So, my biggest learning from managing projects: The PM needs to have-or must take-authority to order the social life of the team. All business is social. The PM can be the senior manager in charge, or have delegated authority from them. PMs pushed farther down the stack will struggle with the tension between authority and responsibility, constantly needing stakeholder buy-in for every decision.

But it’s not hopeless. Most team members want their projects to succeed-they just need clarity and structure to do so. A PM who is collaborative, decisive, and clear in communication can accomplish a lot, even in a low-authority environment.

Documentation and process: How to control scope creep before it starts

Photo illustration by Firefly and Kevin T. Boyd / CC0*

The easiest way to kill a web project? Let scope creep run unchecked. Scope creep happens when priorities shift without structure. Managing it effectively means:

• Locking in major decisions early – What are we building? What’s the absolute minimum viable product for launch?
• Creating a single source of truth – Documentation prevents “I thought we agreed on this?” moments
• Building in structured flexibility – Priorities will shift, but every new request must come with a tradeoff

Documentation is one of the best ways to keep teams aligned. Terminology matters-is it a hero, a banner or a header? Defining a shared vocabulary, writing standards, and UI guidelines reduces ambiguity.

When and how stakeholders engage with the project also matters. We had a recurring problem where last-minute content and CTA decisions would derail production. To fix this, we created standard wireframe documents for each deliverable type. These included:

• A breakdown of basic process, structural requirements and best practices
• A matrix to define copy, UX, and CTA strategy
• A formal review checkpoint before anything moved to design

This one simple process shift reduced last-minute surprises, kept stakeholders engaged at the right time, and prevented unnecessary rework.

Avoiding the Panic Curve in website project management

The Panic Curve, aka the Law of Inverse Attention – Illustration by Kevin T. Boyd and Dall-e CC0*

Web development operates on a creative pipeline-briefing, wireframing, mockups, development, deployment, review. The problem? Stakeholders don’t always engage at the right moments.

Busy teams omit critical details, assuming they’re trivial-until the moment they aren’t. Then, at the last possible second, a stakeholder finally pays attention and demands massive changes.

• Maybe the final copy forces a design change because the replacement for Lorem Ipsum is too long
• Maybe a CTA strategy is rethought at the last minute, requiring new workflows
• Maybe a stakeholder suddenly realizes hey, we need a fancy animation here

Sometimes, these changes are minor annoyances. Other times, they mean ripping apart finished work and delaying the project.

This is what I call the Panic Curve, also known as the Law of Inverse Attention:

• The earlier stakeholders engage, the smaller the changes
• The later they engage, the more disruptive the changes

How do you avoid the Panic Curve? Process and documentation.

• Copy and UX must be approved before scheduling design or dev – Share this policy and write it into the wireframes
• Late-stage changes require escalation – Stakeholders need to know that once a project reaches a certain stage, changes must be justified or they should push the project to a later date
• Enforce a structured review process – If a stakeholder ignored something earlier, they don’t get to panic about it later

Solving problems before they derail the project

No matter how well you plan, something will go wrong. Project milestones will be missed. A major dependency gets delayed. The site doesn’t work on mobile like it was supposed to. An API integration that was advertised as plug and play turns into a multi-week development headache. You can’t prevent every problem, but you can stay ahead of them.

Illustration by Firefly and Kevin T. Boyd / CC0*

• Identify risks early – Every project has weak points; risk management in website projects spots them before they become issues
• Build buffer time into the schedule – Everything takes longer than you think; plan accordingly
• Have a Plan B – What’s the alternative if the preferred solution doesn’t work or project milestones get missed
• Make decisions quickly – The longer a problem lingers, the harder it is to fix
• Include review, testing and quality assurance – Allow time to make sure every element is reviewed and approved at the right stage in the creative cycle; usability testing in website development is especially important to managing web development projects

Process beats improvisation

It’s common for processes to develop organically. People get used to them, no matter how inefficient they might be. In many teams, each stakeholder has their own process, new stakeholders have to invent a process from scratch, and workflows get reinvented every time a project runs.

My second-biggest learning in project management is that the more defined shared processes are, the more efficiently they run.

• “How do we write copy here?”
• “What are the requirements to get a new design?”
• “What’s the procedure for post-launch promotion?”

When these answers are clear and easy to find, the project moves forward without confusion, unnecessary meetings, or duplicate effort.

The challenge-especially in startups-is that we’re making this up as we go along. We try things, abandon what doesn’t work, and focus on what does. The trick is to document, review, and iterate early in the life of a team. That way, processes evolve intentionally rather than through trial and error.

It also helps to remind people: The effort you save later may be your own.

Thinking beyond launch day

Illustration by Firefly and Kevin T. Boyd / CC0*

A website launch is not the finish line-it’s the starting point. The real show begins once real users start interacting with the site.

Post-launch priorities include:

• Fixing the inevitable bugs – No site launches perfectly; expect issues and resolve them fast
• Monitoring performance – Is the site loading quickly? Are users bouncing?
• Optimizing based on real data – Heatmaps, analytics, and A/B testing should drive ongoing improvements
• Keeping security and accessibility in check – Web standards evolve-staying compliant is an ongoing effort

Pre-launch quality assurance can minimize post-launch bug fixing, but there’s always a chance something will go awry during deployment. Browser and functional testing post-launch is essential to catch and fix issues before they impact users.

And all those assumptions we made about how people would use the site? They need to be validated with real data.

One day, I dug into our Google Analytics data to check web performance and noticed something odd. A single landing page for Shopify merchants was getting the bulk of our traffic, but conversions were dismal-below 0.02%. We were paying for traffic but getting almost no return.

Once I surfaced the issue, we pulled together as a team, applied design thinking, and built a better version. The result? A 2% conversion rate-far from perfect, but a massive improvement.

Managing web development isn’t just about keeping projects moving-it’s about making sure they’re successful long after launch. That means strong planning, clear communication, proactive problem-solving, and a commitment to continuous improvement.

Essential skills for success in project management for web development

The web development project management process isn’t just about keeping track of timelines and deliverables-it’s about making sure the right people have the right information at the right time, so teams can execute effectively.

A good web project manager bridges the gap between business strategy, design vision, and technical execution. That takes a combination of organizational skills, technical understanding, and adaptability. Here’s what matters most.

Communication and collaboration: keeping teams aligned

The biggest friction in project web development isn’t always technical-it’s often miscommunication. Teams need cross-functional collaboration in web projects, with a shared understanding of goals, priorities, and constraints, or things start to fall apart.

• Developers need clear requirements so they don’t have to guess what’s expected
• Designers need structured feedback so revisions don’t spiral out of control
• Marketing needs buy-in on messaging early so they’re not scrambling at launch
• Stakeholders need realistic expectations so they don’t derail progress with last-minute changes

When communication breaks down, the project suffers-whether it’s from wasted effort, duplicated work, or misaligned expectations.

We had published four or five “State of” reports (State of Fraud and State of Commerce) previously. Being a high-value editorial content marketing asset, we would typically have both a highly designed report and a highly designed landing page with a single CTA to download the report. We had a routine process, but it wasn’t well documented. A new growth marketing manager very reasonably wanted to break the report into sections and market to different segments, so the idea was to give each audience a different button into the segments of the report. Unfortunately this requirement wasn’t conveyed, verbally or in the wireframe, so when it emerged as a requirement, it hugely complicated the deployment. For reasons, we could not repeat a form ID, so we needed multiple individual forms to drive the conversions, each of which had to be rigged and tested. Fortunately, we were able to deliver on time, but had no time to push back on the idea of five buttons on one page, and the results for that page were seriously unspectacular, and did not seem to achieve the desired segmentation.

Technical understanding: why knowing HTML, CMS platforms, and SEO matters

A web project manager doesn’t need to be a developer, but they do need to understand the ecosystem they’re managing. A website isn’t just a collection of pages-it’s an integration of multiple technologies, and each decision has technical trade-offs.

• CMS platforms (WordPress, Drupal, headless CMS) – How content is structured, managed, and published
• Coding languages – While actual coding ability isn’t necessarily required to manage web development projects, it sure helps to know HTML, CSS and some Javascript; it also helps to have broad knowledge of web programming languages, what they can do, and how hard they are to code, test and maintain, including PHP, Javascript frameworks (like React and Vue), server-side Javascript; also understand the uses of C, C++, Java, Python, SQL and many others, a new one every week it sometimes seems
• Front-end technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript frameworks) – What’s possible with layouts, animations, and interactions
• SEO and structured data – How search engines interpret and rank content
• Website optimization for performance – Why fast load times and mobile usability matter and how to get them
• Third-party integrations (APIs, CRMs, analytics tools) – How data flows between systems

Without technical fluency, a project manager risks making decisions that are impossible, inefficient, or suboptimal. Knowing what’s feasible-and what will cause a headache-helps avoid unnecessary rework and keeps the project on track. This is why it can be helpful to have a developer or former developer who specializes in managing development projects.

Agile thinking and adaptability: managing the unexpected

Even the best-planned projects run into unforeseen issues-delays, technical challenges, shifting priorities. A web development project manager has to stay flexible while keeping teams focused.

• Priorities shift – A key stakeholder changes direction
• A dependency falls through – An API update breaks functionality
• A timeline gets compressed – A marketing campaign moves up the launch date

A rigid project plan won’t survive reality-but a project manager who knows how to pivot without losing momentum will keep things moving.

Time and resource allocation: keeping teams productive

Web development teams balance designers, developers, writers, marketers, and engineers-each with their own timelines, working styles, and dependencies. Without careful planning, bottlenecks develop, deadlines slip, and teams get frustrated.

Good project management means:

• Mapping out dependencies early – What needs to happen first? Who is waiting on whom?
• Keeping teams focused on priorities – What’s the one thing that must be finished first?
• Building in buffer time – Things always take longer than expected; plan for it

A web project is like an assembly line-if one piece isn’t ready, the whole process stalls. The PM’s job is to keep everything flowing smoothly.

My perspective: from designer and developer to project manager

I started as a designer who learned to code, then became a developer who learned to manage projects. That progression gave me a deep understanding of the creative, technical, and operational sides of web projects-and it shaped how I approach project management today.

• As a designer, I focused on user experience and visual clarity
• As a developer, I learned the importance of clean code, performance, and maintainability
• As a manager, I saw how critical it is to align teams, structure workflows, and keep stakeholders engaged at the right time

Every step of that journey informs the way I manage projects now. I understand how creative teams work, how technical teams think, and how business stakeholders make decisions-and bridging those worlds is what makes a web project successful.

But understanding the fundamentals of website project management is only the beginning. Execution-how a project moves from project scope and project plan to deployment-determines whether all that strategy translates into a smooth, successful launch or a chaotic, last-minute scramble.

Illustration by Firefly and Kevin T. Boyd / CC0*

Coming next

Next time, we’ll shift from principles to practice, covering:

• How to structure a web development project from start to finish
• Web project manager duties, from planning to execution
• Web project manager roles in different team structures
• Web project manager responsibilities throughout the project lifecycle
• A project management checklist for web development success
• Project workflows from discovery and design to testing, quality assurance and launch
• Best tools for managing teams, timelines, and tasks effectively
• Project management software for web teams, and how to choose the right one
• How project management methodologies shape web development and execution strategies
• Career insights for those looking to grow in this field

Whether you’re actively managing web projects or looking to transition into a project leadership role, these insights will help you refine your approach, avoid common pitfalls, and run smoother, more efficient web development projects.

🔹 Next up: Managing web development projects: workflows, tools, and career strategies

Reach out

Have a comment about this article? Or a web development story you’d like to add? Want some help with your website? Use the Contact webform to email me.

* Original artwork with AI attribution (Dall-e, Firefly, Midjourney), per Creative Commons, are in the public domain under CC0, and free to copy and use. If you republish, please attribute as indicated and link here.