Annual value review
This page is for the owner who wants one clear moment a year to ask: what did the site give us, what did it cost, and what do we do next? It gives a meeting plan with inputs, an agenda and the decisions to record. The operational side of the year (updates, backups, security, data protection) has its own template, the Annual review checklist; hold both on the same day, or the operational one first.
Who attends
| Person | Brings |
|---|---|
| Owner (chairs and decides) | The goals of the site, the budget |
| The people who use the site daily (editor in chief, store manager) | What works, what costs time |
| Whoever keeps the books | The cost register and income figures |
| Partner, for part of the meeting | Proposals, the state of the installation |
| Host, optionally | Usage, incidents, capacity |
What to prepare
- To do: The ROI worksheet, filled with the year's actual figures.
- To do: The cost register for the year.
- To do: The feature tour, each feature marked: used, not needed, worth trying.
- To do: The store's monthly reports, if you sell (Store reports).
- To do: Incidents of the year and what was learned (After an incident).
- To do: The operational annual review, done or scheduled.
- To do: The release line: is the site on the newest 6.0.x release? Exponential 6.0 is the maintained line
(
SECURITY.md).
A two-hour agenda
| Time | Topic | Output |
|---|---|---|
| 15 min | Goals: are the reasons we have the site still the same? | Goals for next year |
| 25 min | Results: the ROI worksheet, planned against actual | Agreed result, with its explanations |
| 20 min | Costs: the register, costs that grew, invoices that surprised | Cost actions |
| 20 min | The team's view: what costs time, what is missing | A list of pain points |
| 20 min | The feature tour: what we have and do not use | Up to three features to try |
| 20 min | Proposals from the partner, and next year's budget | Approved projects and budget |
Decisions to record
ANNUAL VALUE REVIEW - [site] - [year] Date: ______
Attended: ______________________________________________
Result of the year (from the ROI worksheet): ____________________
Goals for next year:
1. ________________________ 2. ________________________
KEEP (what works and stays as it is):
CHANGE (what we do differently, with owner and date):
STOP (what we no longer do or pay for):
TRY (features from the tour, with owner and date):
INVEST (projects approved, with budget):
Budget for next year agreed: ______ Next review: ______
Signed: ______________________Questions that help
- Which task does the team do by hand every week that the software could do? Look at Features customers often miss.
- Which feature did we pay for in the build and do not use?
- Which cost grew without a decision?
- If the site were down for a day, what would it cost us (Cost of downtime worksheet)?
- Are we still on a supported release, and is next year's update work in the budget (Budgeting for upgrades and maintenance)?
Tip
Keep the filled review with last year's. Three years side by side show more than any single year.
After the meeting
- To do: Decisions sent to everyone who attended, and to the partner and host.
- To do: Each change and project has an owner and a date in the team calendar.
- To do: The quarterly checklist picks up the follow-ups (Quarterly checklist).
Related pages
- Annual review checklist
- ROI worksheet
- Yearly checklist
- Measuring ROI
- Free documentation: this page is free to copy, translate and improve under the GNU FDL 1.3.
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