The Power of Project Specifications: Saving Time and Avoiding Disappointment
Dive into the intricacies of drafting specifications before the development phase begins, enabling you to achieve the desired outcome without regrets.
When launching a new system or website for your company, you'll encounter the concept of a Project Specification (PS). This document is crucial as it outlines the development timeline and the expenses your company will incur during the project's lifecycle.
In this article, we share insights from years of experience, highlighting the benefits of a PS for both the client and the development company, and the key considerations we take into account while drafting one.
What is a Project Specification?
A Project Specification is a document agreed upon by the client and the developer, detailing all requirements for the future website, portal, service, CRM, or ERP system. The more precise and comprehensive these requirements are, the better the understanding between both parties, leading to mutual satisfaction with the end result.
A well-defined PS ensures that the client receives the anticipated outcomes from the start, while for the development team, it acts as a confidence booster, eliminating the need for significant last-minute changes under the stress of looming deadlines.
The Benefits of Having a Project Specification for the Client
Understanding Investment and Outcomes
The PS allows clients to grasp what they're paying for and the website they will receive. By previewing the structure and how elements interact, clients can request changes before development begins.
Verifying Developer Expertise
A PS is usually written by a technical writer, project manager, or team leader. A clear, concise, and unambiguous PS indicates a highly skilled team. Conversely, a confusing and jargon-filled PS is a red flag.
Comparing the Final Product with the PS
Any discrepancies between the completed site (CRM system, mobile app) and the PS obligate developers to make corrections at no extra cost. Refusal to do so means the PS could be a decisive factor in legal disputes.
Estimating the Real Cost of Complex Functionality
It's challenging to gauge the cost of developing a site or app with extensive functionality without a complete picture. The PS helps break down the project into modules, allowing for individual cost assessments. Typically, a project backlog or estimate follows the drafting of project documentation, detailing the time required for each task and multiplying it by the hourly rate of a programmer. This provides not just the PS but also a detailed project valuation.
A PS not only aids in organizing thoughts and understanding the full scope of work but also in defining the project's goals and objectives. It's an indispensable tool for ensuring clarity, setting expectations, and aligning the visions of both the client and the development team for a successful project outcome.
Why Does a Developer Need a Project Specification?
A project specification (PS) is essential for understanding the client's vision. Before drafting a project specification for website development, the specialist engages in a detailed discussion with the client, explores various questions, showcases examples, and suggests solutions. Choices made and descriptions of each feature and element are documented in a unified, structured document. If this document receives the client's approval, it indicates a mutual understanding between the client and the developer, confirming that the PS encompasses all necessary requirements.
The PS serves as a safeguard against unexpected changes. Through our years of experience, we've encountered situations where clients, mid-development, decided to implement significant changes to the project. What often starts as "can we add this small feature?" can escalate to "let's turn this landing page into a second Amazon." The PS proves invaluable in such scenarios, ensuring that work aligns strictly with the agreed-upon document.
Another critical purpose of the PS is to demonstrate expertise. A well-crafted PS can convince even the most skeptical clients of our understanding and capability to meet their needs. Often, it is during the PS drafting phase that potential clients become actual clients, recognizing our deep comprehension of their requirements.
The PS also simplifies and accelerates the project workflow. The entire development team relies on the PS as their guide. A high-quality PS outlines the product's future structure, details every functional element, considers integration with third-party services, and includes UML diagrams or Mind Maps based on user stories if necessary. With a PS, the team can quickly move from prototyping to design and programming without unnecessary delays. Without a PS, endless negotiations, clarification of needs, and adjustments throughout the development process lead to budget overruns and extended timelines, negatively impacting the quality of the code.
Who Should Draft the Project Specification?
In our practice, we've seen instances where clients come with their PS, which often resembles a wishlist lacking detailed functional descriptions. It's not advisable for clients to draft the PS themselves due to potential unfamiliarity with the nuances of web or mobile projects. Instead, entrusting this task to specialized contractors ensures a comprehensive understanding of project requirements.
Our technical writer's primary role is to gather detailed information about the goals and objectives of the future software product. Understanding the client's business deeply is crucial for accurately defining these aspects. For example, if you own an offline retail chain and decide to venture into e-commerce, we need to gather comprehensive details about your business:
Your inventory management system
Planned user roles for the website (client, manager, logistician)
Your unique selling proposition (USP)
Your target audience
It's also vital to estimate the potential web traffic and the number of products on the site during the preliminary project phase. This information helps our specialist accurately focus on key project aspects and propose solutions for unique challenges.
Our principles for drafting a PS include:
Informative
The PS should be as informative as possible, leaving no room for ambiguity.
Clarity
Tasks described in the PS should be visually separated and clear, indicating where one ends and another begins.
Precision
The document should avoid abstract phrases like "user-friendly navigation" or "attractive user preview".
Visual Aid
To ensure understanding of complex interfaces or explain intricate functions, the PS may include images, diagrams, tables, and charts.
Quality
During the PS drafting, we analyze similar websites and draw from our previous projects to ensure the future product surpasses competitors in quality.
From Theory to Practice: Crafting a Website Development Specification
A comprehensive project specification (PS) should adeptly address the following areas:
Project Goals and Objectives
While seemingly straightforward, the initial sections of the document that outline the project's essence, the business challenges it aims to solve, its objectives, and desired outcomes (like business automation or building an online store from scratch) are invaluable. This section can also incorporate the customer's desires, expected results, Unique Selling Proposition (USP), target audience (TA), and monetization strategies.
Design Requirements
This section describes the site's navigation, the relationship between screens, and the sequence of components. Regarding the visual aspect, it lists the main color schemes and any stylistic preferences requested by the client.
Technology Requirements
At this stage, detailed requirements for the project's functional components are specified. This includes technical specifications for coding, the technology stack to be utilized, and hosting or server requirements.
Software Component Description
This crucial part of the PS outlines all website pages and their sections; project functionalities (e.g., login modules, checkout processes); users, their roles, and the functionalities of their accounts in detail.
Marketing Components
SEO requirements for the project are documented here: site structure, rules for generating breadcrumbs, meta tags, and so on.
Cost of Developing the Project Specification
Naturally, depending on the project's type and complexity, the PS's scope and development time can vary, although its structure generally remains the same. Below, we detail the distinctions between specifications for large-scale and smaller projects.
Simple Projects
This category includes landing pages, business card sites, and corporate websites. Their primary aim is to present the services of a company or an individual.
For these projects, drafting a technical specification takes no more than a few days, as the content and main blocks of the PS remain consistent, with minor modifications from one project to the next. Any nuances are meticulously documented. The specification for such projects typically spans 20-30 pages.
Complex Projects
Developing a PS for high-load websites and complex systems with numerous interconnections usually requires at least one month (approximately 160 working hours). Such a specification might range from 80-120 pages, detailing the project's entire functionality, user scenarios, design and browser support requirements, and descriptions of third-party service integrations.
Moreover, large projects are divided into iterations, with a separate PS prepared for each phase since one feature may lead to the addition of another in subsequent stages.
For instance, the first iteration might focus on developing a trading platform as a catalog of goods and services, while the second phase introduces the platform's monetization functionality, incorporating several combined models like premium accounts, charges based on the number of posted ads, etc.
The cost of the PS is linked to the project's estimated price, constituting about 10% of it. Thus, the more complex and extensive the site or app, the higher the PS cost. Below is an approximate pricing guide for specifications across different project types.
The Consequences of Forgoing a Project Specification
Deciding to proceed with your project without a project specification (PS) can lead to the following challenges:
Unexpected Expenses
Without a technical document, there's no clear roadmap for implementing functionalities, significantly increasing the likelihood of exceeding planned development costs. It's common for clients to start with the design, postponing the PS. This approach often leads to the introduction of new features, removal of some modules, and the need to redo the design because designers, not being technical experts, cannot fully anticipate user stories or accurately reflect all project functionalities without a PS.
Lack of Implementation Sequence
A PS outlines each project iteration, i.e., the order in which modules should be developed. This method allows for launching online right after the first milestone. In contrast, without a PS, developers might begin with modules that are easier to develop but offer little value to the client.
Compromised User Experience
Without analyzing competitors and audience preferences, there's a higher chance that the developer will build the project based on personal vision. Features like filtering and product additions may not be implemented in the most user-friendly way, potentially leading to a wave of negative feedback from future customers.
Difficulties in Future Development
If project documentation isn't written during development, introducing future enhancements becomes riskier, as other companies might struggle to understand the work previously done. This oversight, coupled with the absence of a PS, can result in significant financial expenditures on code reviews, with no guarantee that someone will agree to refine your project.
Case Study
We were tasked with developing a CRM system for a company with over 5000 clients managed by just 6 customer service managers. Our goal was to optimize employee workflows so that database management and request processing could be executed in just a few clicks, with sales reports generated daily, monthly, and annually.
The client insisted that developing without a PS was feasible and that the desired product could be created without documentation.
The project we developed initially met the client's basic requirements but failed to fully address the problem due to the absence of a PS and a comprehensive description of all business processes that needed automation.
Upon identifying these issues, we revisited the automation requirements with the company's CEO and embarked on project revisions. Ultimately, the website's modification required an additional 300 hours, resulting in unplanned expenses for the company.
Need Help Drafting an Effective Project Specification?
A well-crafted and comprehensive PS is the first step toward a successful project. It serves as the foundation for everything that follows. If you want your project to meet all your expectations fully, you can schedule a free call with our CTO or visit our website to leave your contact information. Our technical specialist will then reach out to assist with drafting a PS for your project.
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