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I was working as a freelancer for a long time and I had a quite simple solution for lack of documentation. Before the first meeting I'd send a customer 12-page
by fridek 14y ago
I was working as a freelancer for a long time and I had a quite simple solution for lack of documentation. Before the first meeting I'd send a customer 12-page form to fill which covered most of the "what and why" of the project. It quickly turned out that most of people have no idea whatsoever about the product they wanted to buy. I know that it's partly our job to guide people through rough path, but if all customer knows is "I want a website" it's better to quit early.
Sometimes I waited for a filled form for few months or even more (not paying much attention), and some of these projects were very successful. If I'd have started building right away, I'd spent these few months struggling and waiting for decisions to be made. What is even worse, I'd probably estimate my time and salary based on wrong assumptions, so I would be mad and underpaid. The project would take way longer than I estimated, so customer would be angry too.
Do yourself a favor and never start coding before final documentation arrives.
- smiler 14y agoCould you post that form somewhere?
- eric-hu 14y agoI, too would like to see this form. It would provide a lot of guidance for my company. We're knee deep in the consequences of scope creep right now.
- fridek 14y agoIt is in Polish, so I guess it won't be very useful. I may translate it and post somewhere if I have some free time. For now, try googling "website brief template", it's how I made my first version, then improved it over time. It's basically a compilation of most of the questions I had to ask during my previous projects. If you like to look like a funny guy try adding some "would you like a pictures of your cat on the website". It releases some tension associated with such formal document (which I usually attach to signed contract, just in case), but be prepared to hear "yes, I actually would like to have cats on my website". It's probably worth mentioning that this approach is correct only for small and medium projects, like things possible to deploy with Wordpress ninja in team. This may be a good place to start: http://www.methodandclass.com/article/write-a-web-site-brief/ http://www.methodandclass.com/article/write-a-web-site-brief...
- eric-hu 14y agoI think I'd be able to get the idea of your questions using Google translate--but the link helps too. Thanks!
- joshcrews 14y agoThe projects I do have never had final documentation before development started, and its not necessary. I got this process from another Ruby consultant and it works great - Get wireframes of main page views (usually there are about 6 of these. You can help them create this - Get them to write out, or describe the requirements and take notes - Break the wireframes and requirements into user stories and load it into pivotal tracker with estimates - Tell them "we are going to build all these user stories PLUS 30 'freebie' points of stores. Any changes you want you can spend your freebie points on, and after that you can substitute out currently scheduled points if you really want those changes It works great so far.
- fridek 14y agoThat sounds like a good idea. Maybe not the best for me, as I always had trouble with drawing a line "our contract does not cover that" and I'd probably lose negotiations about how many points something is worth. It's still better than having no safe margin at all.
- nsomaru 14y agoWould you mind sharing that document?
- padobson 14y agoI'd like to see it too.