The website project team.

The project to overhaul our University website and transform it into an industry-leading phenomenon is now fully underway, so we thought it was time to introduce you to the project team taking on this challenge. 

There will be a number of technical and content people working on the project throughout the different phases, but let’s start with the core project team.

Rob Fowles, Digital Marketing Manager, is our Project Lead. This means that he has responsibility for overseeing the progress of the project, involved in making key decisions, ensures we stay on budget and is the main point of contact for stakeholders and our agency, Deeson. Rob also manages the Digital Marketing team within Marketing and will be juggling the project with his other priorities. 

Rob Fowles standing in front of a wall of post-it notes.
Rob working on the second Design Sprint in Canterbury in September

Sarah Little is our full-time Project Manager, responsible for the day-to-day running of the project, reporting on progress, producing internal and external comms, and keeping people, budgets and resources on track. Sarah has been in a number of roles in the Digital Marketing and Campaigns teams over the past two years so is well-placed to effectively manage and deliver the web project. 

Peter Briers, the Senior Web Developer within the Digital Marketing team, is seconded to the project for the majority of his time and is our technical guru. He’s responsible for scoping and delivering the back-end and front-end of the website, including managing the content management system, integrating software into the new site, and will work alongside Deeson to design and build the website. Peter joined the Digital Marketing team in November 2015 and has worked with Rob and Sarah during that time to design and implement significant improvements to our current website. 

Laura-Jane Gould, Head of Brand, is overseeing the project team and ensures it ties in with the University strategic priorities and ties into the Brand development project.

Throughout the project, we will also be getting support from the wider Marketing team and other University departments to feed into the research, design and testing phases so everyone feels part of our journey to create a brand-led, content-rich website.

Alongside our internal day to day resource, we have also appointed a Project Advisory Group of Directors and other senior members of staff from across the University. This group meets monthly and has been set up to provide guidance and contribute to strategic decision making that is going to required along the way.

We also have a team of UX, Design and Content specialists within our partner agency Deeson. They will be introducing themselves in a separate blog post over the next few weeks.

So, as you can see, a lot of resource has been allocated to the project to ensure it is a success and delivers a website fit to take the University forward in delivering on its strategic ambitions. If you have any questions or comments for the team, feel free to email us at webjobs@derby.ac.uk.

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