Programmers
always begin with a written outline. When you come to hire a
programmer, the better your outline, the easier the project
is going to be and the more successful the final outcome will
be.
Feature List
Just as it sounds, the feature list is a list of all the features
you want your product to contain. Put as many down as you can
think of. You’ll find that the list will come in handy
not just to explain to your programmer what you want your program
to do, but you’ll also be able
to use it when it’s time to put together the marketing
material. In effect, you’re writing a list of unique sales
points. |
You
might end up with something like: Capable of handling gifs,
jpegs and bitmap images.
Easy, one-click picture editing.
Simple to use, fast to learn...
And so on...
I usually find that this is the most enjoyable part of the
whole project. As you come to think of each little feature,
you’ll find that you actually get quite excited. The
project will begin to form in your mind and each feature should
lead naturally onto the next.
User Stories
Here we get into more detail. User stories describe the program
from the user’s perspective. For the programmer these
are the best way to understand precisely what your program
is expected to do. For example, you might have a user story
that ran like this:
“User right-clicks on image and receives a menu offering
Edit functions. The user can then effect a change to the whole
image by clicking on one of the options.”
The user story has to be clear enough to be easily understood
by the programmer but detailed enough to provide guidance.
You want the programmer to be able to look at it and say,
“Hey, that’s cool!”
Data Directory
This is where things get complicated. Most software programs
work at some level by storing and retrieving data. If you
don’t put the right data in the right place, you’re
going to get the wrong results, bugs and delays. Personally,
I leave this part to the programmer. If he can’t get
it right, what chance do I have?
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