How to brief a software project without blowing the budget

Describe the problem, not the solution

You don’t need a technical specification. Tell the vendor how you work today and where it gets stuck. The best briefs are simple: “Orders come in by email. Jane retypes them into Excel and then into accounting. It takes her two hours a day and now and then an order gets lost.” A good developer learns more from that than from a twenty-page document.

What to prepare for the first meeting

• Who will use the system and how many people that is.
• The spreadsheets, forms and documents you work with today. Examples help the most.
• Which systems the new software has to work with, such as accounting, an e-shop or a CRM.
• What success looks like: fewer hours of manual work, fewer mistakes, a better overview for management?
• A rough budget. The vendor can then propose what fits, instead of guessing.

Why projects go over budget

1. Everything at once. Trying to design the whole system up front means paying for features that end up unused.
2. The brief changes during development and nobody agrees what that does to price and timeline.
3. Data migration and integrations are underestimated.
4. Users see the system only at the end and find it doesn’t match their work.

What to ask a vendor

• How will you split the project into stages, and when will I see the first working version?
• Who will own the source code, the data and access to the server?
• How will we handle changes to the brief during development?
• Who looks after the system after launch, and what does it cost?
• What happens if we want to continue with another vendor?

A process that works

1. Initial consultation. Go through how you work with the vendor and find where you lose the most time.
2. Screen design. Before any code is written, click through the system and check it matches your work.
3. First version. The smallest scope that brings value, running in real operations.
4. Growth in stages. Based on user experience, always with an estimate before each stage.