One of the best-kept secrets in software development is the specification. Having a thorough specification is often the difference between success and failure on any project. Why?
- A spec is the only way to truly get accurate cost information.
- A spec is the only way to truly get accurate scheduling information.
- A spec saves everyone time and money and keeps the project from going down many dead-ends.
- Software written from a thorough spec is better and cheaper than software where they “winged it”, every time, no exceptions.
Joel Spolsky once wrote that “if you don’t have a spec, you will always spend more time and create lower quality code.” The surefire way to convince yourself of this is to try and do a project without one. Writing specifications into the hundreds of pages seems like a tedious expense until you add up all of the bugs, software rewrites, and change orders you are saving yourself from down the road.
Unfortunately, many clients lack the technical expertise to create thorough specifications. Truly valuable specs are written by senior developers, or at the very least, professional technical writers. A good rule of thumb is to have about one page of spec for every $1000 of total project cost. Specs should include thorough mockups of each screen, user stories, implementation details, and functional and performance requirements. Having such information in the spec is often the difference between project success and project failure.
We provide hourly-rate specification writing services, whether you want to work with us or another vendor for development. Our incredible depth of experience on iOS makes us the ideal candidates for identifying technical problems in your development roadmap and specifying solutions before the development team writes a single line of code, saving you costly fixes and changes later.
If you’re interested in professionals writing your project specification to keep your development on track, get in touch today!
