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Chapter 2: Agile Methodologies and Approaches

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that ’ s what Claudia wants. She ’ s the expert on her business and marketplace, and you ’ re the expert coder.

From here forward it ’ s a partnership. She will eventually become the product owner in the process, the

person who provides you, the developer, with the kind of necessary input to delineate tasks.

You can start anywhere, really, but you ’ ve learned from past experience not to start by asking bottom - up

questions. In other words, trying to dissect every single possible field for a product or how categories

interact would just confuse Claudia. Instead, you draw a big rectangle on a sheet of paper and label it

“ home page. ”

You tell Claudia that the best way to start is with a prototype mockup. That way the two of you can start

figuring out the major components of each page and from there fill in the look and feel and other details.

As you talk, you draw a smaller horizontal rectangle near the top of the big rectangle. You explain that

this is where the store ’ s logo and main navigation will go — pages like Contact Us, About Us, and

perhaps special features or deals. At the bottom of the big rectangle, you draw another smaller rectangle,

and explain that this is the site ’ s footer, which will contain a copyright notice, a link to the privacy

policy, and other minutiae.

So far, what you ’ ve drawn looks a lot like Figure 2 - 1.

Figure 2 - 1

Now, you need to know what goes in the middle. You suggest some kind of featured item or point of

focus or visual interest, but the page also needs to allow users to navigate quickly and easily to any point

in the site.

Yes, Claudia says that a featured item is a good idea, perhaps something that could stay up for a week or

so, something that she could control instead of something random. She wants a photo of the item, the

item ’ s name, a short description, and a link to some kind of detail page. You suggest that it might be

good to have a “ buy now ” button as well, right on the home page, and she agrees. Claudia also thinks

that something off to the right of the main feature might be a random list of other items, maybe one

product from each major category. Each item in the list would feature a small thumbnail, a product

name, and a link to a detail page. Again, you fill in a “ buy now ” link as well.