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Subject:Re: Specifications From:Catie Easley <ceasley -at- IS -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 18 Nov 1997 14:53:51 -0600
Good luck getting the project leaders to change their minds. Requirements
here are typically written after the project is done! We recently had team
meetings (during the construction phase) to hash out the requirements for a
project. We ended up spending much more time (and the client's money)
gathering requirements after the fact. If we would have captured them before
the design phase the project would have went very smoothly. A project
without requirements will more than likely fail (by that I mean over-budget
and late) if the requirements are not captured up front.
Robyn Hume wrote:
> Our tech writing department is making yet another effort to get the
> programmers and engineers at our manufacturing company to write
> Requirements and Specifications documents. We have a new project in the
> works with a partner in Austrailia ( We are in Canada). Two developers
> are working in two continents and no one is using any written
> requirements or specifications.
> I have given them some samples of software and hardware specs and want
> to develop a template for the company to follow.
> I am having trouble accessing the techwr archives and so my questions
> are:
>
> 1. Would anyone care to share some favorite software/hardware spec
> contents and samples, Functional or otherwise .
> 2. Does anyone have any suggestions as to dealing with stubborn project
> leaders who don't seem to think these are important . I have tried the
> "legal liability" argument and the "we need them to write the manual"
> argument but to little avail.
>
> Posts: mailto:techwr-l -at- listserv -dot- okstate -dot- edu
> Commands: mailto:listserv -at- listserv -dot- okstate -dot- edu (e.g. SIGNOFF TECHWR-L)
> Archives: http://listserv.okstate.edu/archives/techwr-l.html,
> Subjects: JOB:, QUESTION:, SUMMARY:, ANNOUNCE:, or none of these.
