Damon Isaac's E-Portfolio

Dear CIO,

Currently we employ 12 web developers at a cost of $1,500,000 a year. However,75% of the work currently being done by our developers can be done more efficiently by implementing Word-Press as our new web development platform. We can improve efficiency by 80% and reduce head count by 3 thereby saving $1,125,000 over 3 years.

Word-Press is an efficient, stable, and less time-consuming web development platform used for designing and maintaining websites. Maintained by Automattic, an external company, this provides an outsourcing advantage for low cost. Because Automattic handles all the updates and patches, we no longer have to worry about patching to close vulnerabilities on our website. Because of this, our developers can spend less time bug fixing and more time developing content. Word-Press provides thousands of templates and tools that allow our developers to create websites without writing hundreds of lines of code. While Word-Press maintains the functionality of other development platforms by allowing direct codding, it is not required to implement everything. By reducing the amount of code strain on our developers, we make them more efficient and free to create the content rather than being worried about limitations in either their own codding skills or the perceived lack of functionality in the platform. With the use of add-ons and plugins our developers can save time by implementing already created solutions to site design such as page functionality without wasting time developing the code they need. This translates into reduced costs down the line.

Because Word-Press allows more to be done with less effort, our head count will scale slower than with our previous development platform. With Word-Press we can add and remove pages and change content through a GUI, therefore requiring fewer people to accommodate a website that increases in complexity as it grows in size. Word Press gives one person the access to multiple skillsets through usage of existing codes, themes and plugins. By implementing Word-Press, we will increase efficiency by 80%. We will keep 5 developers working on our old systems and train 4 on the new system. On the backend, we will need to purchase hardware and system software and this will cost $200,000 for a development and production system.  Additionally, we will need to purchase maintenance agreements for these systems which will cost us an additional  $108,000 over 3 years.  Finally, the developers will need training and this will cost $40,000 including lost productivity for our four remaining developers. The total cost over 3 years is $348,000 providing a net savings of $777,00.

Works Cited

Schwartz, Adam. “Top 10 Reasons To Use WordPress.org For Your Website | Computer Courage: Computer Repair Berkeley, Web Design San Francisco Bay Area.” Computer Courage: Computer Repair Berkeley, Web Design San Francisco Bay Area. 21 July 2010. Web. 01 Apr. 2012. <http://www.computercourage.com/wordpress/top-10-reasons-to-use-wordpress-org-for-your-website/>.

Richard. “Why Use WordPress?” Why Use WordPress? Seo Bounty, 30 Jan. 2012. Web. 3 Apr. 2012. <http://www.seobounty.com/why-use-wordpress/>.