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The last time I wrote a specification was years ago, using a waterfall method.

I am now about to gather the requirements for my first Laravel project, I am working as a lone developer.

How is everyone else doing this?

I was thinking of getting an overview of the requirements, writing a spec, then communicating with the customer iteratively to refine the document to something I can start working with.

Then I was going to do a prototype and gets some feedback.

Then I would work on "chunks" of the project and present to the customer for feedback and refining after every stage.

How does that sound? Any recommended reading?

Mick

Mick
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1 Answers1

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The Scrum approach is to put requirements in the format of 'user stories' in to a backlog (effectively a prioritised list).

Rather than gathering all the detailed requirements up front we aim to gather just enough requirements to start development (perhaps sufficient to keep the team busy for 2-4 weeks). In Scrum we work in what we call 'sprints' that are regular sized iterations of work (much like the "chunks" you describe).

Then, the requirements are continuously refined and added to as the team progresses. The team does the highest priority requirements first and then demonstrates progress to the customer (the 'Product Owner' in Scrum terminology) and stakeholders (other interested parties). Based on the feedback the team gets they either carry on as before or they may adapt. For example they may take the feedback and add it as new user stories to the backlog and prioritise them against the existing stories. This differs from the prototype approach in that we try to have production-ready working software at the end of each iteration.

If you are interested in using this agile approach I would highly recommend reading 'Agile Estimating and Planning' by Mike Cohn.

Barnaby Golden
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  • Thanks, that is pretty much the approach I am trying to take. I will have a look at that book. – Mick Jan 13 '16 at 16:56