Little Thoughts…

Specifications, Oh My!

Chapter 7 is all about specifications: how to write them, what they consist of, and how to use them effectively. I found this chapter to be quite interesting and insightful because I wasn’t quite sure what a “specification was exactly and after reading the chapter I have a much better understanding how what they are and how to use them. At first glance I thought a specification was more of a technical piece of writing that a Project Manager typed up to present to their client but it is much more than that. The author discusses how a specification is broken down into a few different sections and how each section needs to be differentiated because if they run together then the reader may get confused easily and lose interest in reading the specification.

Berkun tells his readers that there are four sections to a specification that must be written separately and they are: requirements, feature, technical, and work items. He also makes sure his readers understand the idea that writing a specification is not the same thing as designing. The specification is more about discussing the scope of the project as well as explaining to readers the technical aspects of the project. So all in all, it’s pretty much like the proposals we are writing for our Module 3 in this course. This is why this chapter has come in so handy for me because the details of a specification are pretty much the same thing as a proposal. Berkun goes on to tell us that there are three primary goals for writing a specification and they are:

• ensure that the right product gets built
• provide a schedule milestone that concludes a planning phase of a project
• and enable deep review and feedback from different individuals over the course of the project

Again, I feel these objectives tie in closely with our proposal writing for Module 3 so I will use all of the author’s advice when finishing up my proposal for my client!