Jason discusses the importance of investing in a well documented custom software design prior to the development phase of a software development project.
Custom Software Design- Script from Video Blog
Hello I’m Jason Taylor with Code Authority Enterprise Solutions in Frisco, Texas.
Today we’re filming a video blog; we’ll be talking about Software Design.
More specifically the design and discover phase of every software project that must be thoroughly accounted for.
In a software project, the most important phase is to document what you are going to build and how it’s going to work.
There’s nothing more important than the effort that goes into that phase of the software development project. Without that the functionality that you’ll get will not solve your business problem.
I get calls all the time ….
Caller: “Jason you guys do custom software?”
Jason: “Yeah, we do custom software. What kind of project do you have in mind?”
Caller: “Well, I want to build a database that does this, does that. I want it to work on the web, maybe with my mobile phones.”
Jason: “Sure, we can do that, we specialize in Microsoft Technologies, we can do that all day”
Caller: “Well, how much will it cost and how long will it take?”
Jason: “I’ll be happy to tell you that after I build you a thorough software design document”.
We will come in to meet your team – your subject matter expert. We will interview them and find out the processes that you use in your business that you are hoping to automate.
· We will document it
· We will build a database diagram
· We will build mock screens
· We will do all these things before we start and before our developers write one line of code.
Most people don’t take the time to do this right. They jump into a software project way too soon. Until I have documented their database and build mock screens, I can only give a very, very inaccurate wild estimate.
Now the problem is that most of the “moonlighters” and “hack developers” out there will tell a client that calls anything they want to hear.
Projects that don’t thoroughly invest in design will inevitably cost more, take longer and many times totally fail.
One of the reasons you want to do this design document is so that the cost and the time it takes is accurate when the project starts. When it’s over you have something that I can bid on and any other vendor can also bid on.
And to close out my video blog this week, I would like to reiterate that every software project must go through a thorough design process or it will take too long and cost too much money and it may fail.
Don’t let any software developer start your project before you have those things in your hands otherwise is very likely to cause too much or fail altogether.
That’s the way we do it at Code Authority and we do it right.
Watch the Custom Software Design Video