Project Specification Development

A detailed project specification is your best defense against the software death spiral – the one that means your project either finishes late and over budget, or on time without all the features you needed.

An accurate project plan starts with an accurate project specification.

What Makes a Good Specification

A good specification includes both the necessary technical details and the necessary business details. Technical specifications and restrictions define the parameters within which the project will operate – this can include your existing hardware and software environment and any necessary interfaces it provides, or the parameters within which you would like to operate in a future environment (i.e. "use only freely available Open Source" software or "must be compatible with Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 and higher and Apple's Safari 1.3 or higher.)

Sniffing out the necessary business requirements means working with your staff to determine what elements of your business are, and are not, relevant to the project at hand. Missing details will inevitably lead to unexpected project costs when these features have to be added in at a later date – at great cost.

Preparing a good specification document means working with your staff and understanding what developers need to know – we can handle both of these.

Deliverables. Detailed project technical specification. Detailed project outline and corresponding supporting documents as necessary (i.e. ERD, Software Flow Chart.) Risk document, outlining the perceived potential risks of the project that will need to be tracked.

Rates. Complete project specification documentation can be prepared at rates from US$75 per hour. Fixed rates are available by negotiation.

The rule in design has always been "What you see is what you get". In software, the trick is making sure that "What You Get Is What You Expected."