Engineering specifications

Posted by admin | Product Development time line »

Once we had the functional specs ready along with our design mindmaps, we had a fair idea where to go from there. The mindmaps outlined how each page needed to be designed in html and as we documented each page into our master specifications that listed every function - I knew that we had something really exciting going. The value of our product became more and more clearer during this process and I felt closer to building just what our market needs at this time.

After 3 months of solid work and dealing with all the issues, complications, anomalies that came our way - we ended up with a fully detailed and complete functional specification that included links to pages already fully designed containing all of the functionality of the entire application in them.

We searched for the best ranking developers on RentACoder which is an art in itself, we approached more than 20 and sent them a job description asking if they would send me a proposal for doing the development and a bid. The more specific your requirements, the more easier it will be to filter out prospects. I always write a 2 page outline of what it is we are looking for and I ask each bidder to reply by sending back a detailed outline of what they understand about the work and how they plan on tackling it. Trust me, only serious bidders will take the time out - those are the people you want to be talking to.

You can count on 60% of the bidders dropping out the minute you ask for this and of the 40% who don’t you can count on 80% of them ruling themselves out - because the detailed answer they present are either copied and pasted from some other work so non specific to your request or the writing and presentation is second rate.

We ended up with just 2 suitable candidates out of 20 bidders after this process. After interviewing them both the winning bidder was clear, it didn’t even come down to a choice. There was only one man standing and so far so good in regards to the work we are getting back.

Having found and finalized a deal with our engineering team it is just a matter of providing them the specification and a file full of HTML pages that link off the spec to pages already hosted on our server. They can read the specification referencing the designs on our servers and ask for any clarity they need, they can load the same pages onto their servers and start designing the database schematics. From here on its simply a matter of wiring it all up without having to risk a mis-understanding of expectations.

They can see it in our pre-designed pages and read the functionality in our specification. When it comes time to deliver version 1.1 to us, all we need to do is refer to the specification. Check off every function and test it, if its not on the new dynamic pages they designed for us then the specification is not complete saving any disputes on grounds of mis-understandings. Everything is black and white.


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