Reviving the Lost Craft of Writing Specification Documents
My CFUnited presentation went very well – the room was pretty full and I had a bunch of great questions from the audience. If you were there, thank you for showing up!
Here are the materials:
Reviving the Lost Craft of Writing Specifications.zip, a zip-up of the PowerPoint presentation. It’s 144 slides and about a 14 MB download.
FunctionalSpecificationExample.pdf, the 16 page sample spec doc I showed for the fictional Jabberwocky application.
Sample Prototype.graffle.zip, the example graphical prototype I showed which used the YUI Design Stencil. This is an OmniGraffle file, which is similar to Visio, but only available on the mac.
Reviving the Lost Craft of Writing Specifications.pdf, the 21 page whitepaper I wrote upon which the presentation was based. If you missed me in person, this whitepaper contains pretty much everything I said (but is much less funny).
I’m going to be giving this presentation again in the next few months: at Charlie Arehart’s CF Meetup, the Salem CFUG and the Portland RIA group.
Good stuff! Would you also happen to have a sample tech spec doc?
Comment by Lola LB — June 22, 2008 @ 12:00 am
Thanks for the great presentation!
Comment by Jeremy Prevost — June 23, 2008 @ 12:00 am
Hi Lola –
No, I don’t have a tech spec doc. I don’t tend to write them much, since I instead include the constituent parts: DB schema, object/model diagram, code stubs and unit tests. Those items together make up the "tech spec". And since those items all are essentially blueprints for the software, I don’t have any sample I can share, nor do I have any past clients willing to share theirs! Maybe one day I’ll create a purely sample set of documents for a fictional project.
Comment by Nat Papovich — June 23, 2008 @ 12:00 am
Awesome materials, thanks Nat for taking the time to write them, post them and share them for all!
I’m just reading through the FunctionalSpecificationExample.pdf and it looks like page 3 gets cut off and then it continues from page 5. Doesn’t look like any import info is gone, but figured I’d let you know anyway.
Thanks again!
Comment by Greg Stevens — August 8, 2008 @ 12:00 am
It looks like a task for schoolchildren, but could you help me with your comments answering this question?
Given a New Specification to Write, Please Describe the Steps you would Take.Please, help me!:)
Comment by Tanya — August 12, 2008 @ 12:00 am
Hi Greg, yes that was intentional. It’s just an example, after all
Tanya, take a look at the PowerPoint presentation. It has information about the steps taken, where the prototype fits in, etc.
Comment by Nat Papovich — August 12, 2008 @ 12:00 am
Thank you:)
Comment by Tanya — August 12, 2008 @ 12:00 am