Fresh

Rule # 8 – Define, Specify, Implement.

“You should never, never doubt what nobody is sure about.” W. Wonka

Always write specs! They can be long 1000 page specs or they can be 10 user flow diagrams, it doesn’t matter as long as you have all the people working on the project sign off on them as well as the stakeholders and administrators of the finished project. This will save you some of the major headaches and hurt when things start to get squirrely around launch time and you need to ask for more money or an extension on deadlines because of scope creep. If a developer has to define functionality in the middle of development, alarm bells should be ringing. By the time the developer’s fingers hit the keyboard, there should be no questions about what he or she is supposed to implement. It’s critical to have a functional specification to serve as a guide for the developer. The spec can come in many shapes and sizes ranging from nothing more than a to do list, to a full blown information architecture document complete with use cases. In either case the developer should only concern themselves with what’s the best way to implement a feature, never “what’s this for?”, or “what’s supposed to happen when a user clicks here?”

Having an agreed-upon document will ground those conversations in reality and a reasonable client will usually have no problem handing over more cash and pushing a deadline back as long as it is reasonable. Buildings are never constructed with partial or non-existent blueprints and thus neither should large websites. Imagine what buildings would look like in that scenario….. it happens more often than it should with websites. Think about that.