PWPM Wiki

Web Application Development Procurement Plan

This is a practical guide to building a procurement plan for a web application development project — what will be bought, how and from whom, adapted to the realities of building a custom web application.

What a Procurement Plan is

A procurement plan is what will be bought, how and from whom. For the full concept and how it works in general, see Procurement Management. On a web application development project it plays the same role, tuned to this kind of work.

Why it matters for a Web Application Development project

Web Application Development projects live or die on building a custom web application. A well-built procurement plan gives the team a shared, explicit reference for exactly that — reducing ambiguity, aligning stakeholders, and making problems visible early enough to act. Skipping it, or doing it generically, is how web application development projects drift into avoidable delay and cost.

What to include

  • What to procure
  • Contract types
  • Selection criteria
  • Timeline and SLAs

Web Application Development-specific considerations

Tailor the procurement plan to the risks that most often derail web application development projects:

  • Unclear or shifting requirements
  • Technical debt
  • Security and performance at scale

Example

On a real web application development project, the procurement plan would be shaped by building a custom web application. In particular, it should explicitly account for the project’s biggest risks — unclear or shifting requirements, technical debt, security and performance at scale — rather than treating them as afterthoughts.