frame of reference against which the team can evaluate proposed features and requirements
changes.
Business context: Summarize some of the business issues surrounding the project, such as
profiles of major customer categories, assumptions that went into the site concept, and the
client’s management priorities for the new site.
To be sure you’ve got all your bases covered, you might want to try following an established project
initiation and management process. See the free downloads below for a Project Vision and Scope
Template you can adapt for use with your own projects.
10 Requirement Traps to Avoid
As Wiegers points out, successful IT and web development projects are built on a foundation of wellunderstood
requirements. Even so, many web site developers tend to get caught in traps that prevent
them from effectively collecting, documenting or managing project requirements. There are several
symptoms that indicate you might be getting caught in a "requirement trap":
Confusion about what a requirement is
Lack of customer participation
Vague or ambiguous requirements
Requirements that aren’t prioritized
Site functionality that no one uses
Analysis paralysis
Scope creep: the project parameters keep shifting
Inadequate requirements change process
Insufficient change impact analysis
Inadequate requirements version control
Speak Your Customer’s Language
As you develop your vision and scope document, strive to ensure that you and your client are speaking
the same language. To reduce professional liability, web site developers and designers should keep in
mind that although they understand the technology backward and forward, their customer probably
doesn’t. If your project documents are too technical, your client might be left to assume that what
you’re doing is going to meet its business need, when you may actually be off the mark.
Should that happen, you could be deep into site development before any disconnect becomes apparent,
and that’s when you’ll experience “scope creep.” Meeting the client’s need is suddenly going to take
more time and cost more than you and your client expected. And that means trouble, because this is the
point when some customers stop payment and talk to a lawyer.
By clearly outlining a development project's vision and scope, and carefully documenting project
requirements, you can create a thorough project proposal that will meet the business needs, keep costs
within budget, and reduce the risk that you’ll end up facing an E&O lawsuit. The bottom line: for web
site developers and designers, professional liability reduction and risk management go hand-in-hand
with careful project management.