ITC200 > The Scope Plane
The process of defining your scope is valuable in the aspect that it will force you to address potential conflicts and rough spots in the project while the whole project is still somewhat hypothetical. If the scope is not clearly defined you may end up with a project that is ever-changing and a complete mish-mash of ideas that never come to fruition.
If you write out a description of exactly what you are setting out to build, everyone on the team will know what the project goals are and when they have been reached.
Defining a set of requirements of what you are building allows the dividing of responsibilities more efficient. Also, knowing what you are not building right now will allow for scheduling for milestones down the road.
Functional Specifications & Requirements
After we have figured out, “why we are making the site?” we then need to ask ourselves “what are we going to make and how?” On the software side, we are concerned with functionality of our project – what would be considered the “feature set” of our project, our money-maker – while dealing with the content of our project site.
The functional aspect of our scope is defined as our functional specifications document – what are project site is actually going to “do” given our goals that we laid out during the strategy plane.
Some of these functional specifications and requirements apply to the project site as a whole:
- Branding Requirements
- Browser-Platform Compatibility
Branding:
- The Workstation Technologies website will adhere to the branding standards as set forth in the (fictional) Workstation Technologies branding guidelines document
- Photographs of products will be high quality and in proper perspective as to allow for proper inspection
Technical:
- The website will be written using valid XHTML & CSS while utilizing PHP & mySQL to generate pages
- The website will be able to be viewed on both Mac & PC computers
- Target browsers will be Firefox 2 & 3, Safari 2 & 3, Internet Exploder 7 & 8. Internet Exploder versions prior to 7 will not be supported
Other requirements may apply to a specific feature or set of features:
- Viewing & Delivering Product Specifications
- Delivering Customer Support & Feedback
Informational:
- History & General Information
- News & Press Release
- Mailing Address
- Phone Numbers
Customer Tools:
- Product Search
- Customer Login
- Shopping Cart
- Account Summary
Product Features:
- High Quality Product Photos with Slideshow including a 360º view of product
- Dimensions of product including but not limited to height, width, depth and weight
- Technical Specifications of product
- Product Manual download available in PDF format for all products
- Product Comparison feature where the user can see products side by side
- Customer Reviews
- Suggested Products
Customer Service Features:
- Help & FAQ
- Technical Support
- Software Downloads
- Technical Notes
- Service Tickets
- Order History
- Shipping & Tracking
By writing out these requirements and exploring different suggestions and ideas, you will find that you may come to completely different requirements to solve the problems than you had imagined.
Ask yourself, “What can our site do to make the process of X,Y & Z easier for our customers?” – how would they like to see the problems solved vs. how we think it should be solved—what features are they asking for that we are not providing?
By imagining our target users coming to our site and performing tasks we will start to build scenarios – short and simple narratives describing how one of our personas might try to fulfill a task that they are setting out to perform.
The level of detail you will find yourself describing in your requirements will depend on the level of complexity of scope in your project:
amazon.com
guitarcenter.com
motu.com
behringer.com
macmall.com
dell.com
g-technology.com
Content Requirements
When we talk about content the mind usually thinks we are talking about text – but let us not forget that images, audio, video, etc. are content. Together any combination of these formats (Text & Images) may make up a single feature or functional requirement that we have laid out. How can you purchase an item without seeing what it looks like and reading a description, eh?
When writing out your content requirements, you should provide rough estimates of the size of each feature – dimensions of the product image and rough word count of the description. By doing this we will get a good estimate of how they will fit together or not fit together when we start to build our pages.
For projects involving content that may either be existing or new, a content inventory is a necessary step in keeping your project organized and efficient
Content Inventories can be put together using a simple spreadsheet application divided appropriately into categories based on your site needs:
(Sinkula) Example Content Inventory
