Software detailed design documentation

The point here is for the product owner to answer these open ended questions as well as they can, and then for the developer to ask follow up questions once they receive the answers. As a result, you will dramatically reduce the risk of miscommunication and the need to write additional code.

Setting clear milestones for your design document template is key to fully understanding the scope of your project. Okay, now for the part you all quite possibly skipped to before reading everything else, which I of course do not recommend! This should include items such as, who the intended audience is, and what the overall goal of the project will be. Under the User Requirements section, you may have noticed that we highly recommend taking advantage of a powerful exercise, which is creating user stories.

Additionally, here are some more questions you might consider answering in the System Overview section:. These are some wireframe examples for an iOS application, which accurately portray what this should look like…. Hence, this is where prioritization and setting realistic milestones for your product come into play….

As described above, the milestones section should include deadlines for completion and expected deliverables. However, you must prioritize the basic functionalities needed to build your MVP. Prioritizing features and user stories will help you identify the basic functionalities needed to build your MVP. By now, you should have everything you need to start writing a professional software design document.

But the problem is: these illustrations say nothing about animations, control states e. Does it disappear when unusable? Before you start writing the code behind these illustrations, you should be able to answer all of those questions.

Specifically, you should know:. Screen dimensions are important too. There are as of writing three sizes of iPhone screens. Separate wireframes for 3. If your client supplies you with graphics, make sure that they are correctly sized with the proper aspect ratios; morphing any bitmap that has text or objects like circles will introduce distortions. Generalize these ideas, and be as detailed and thorough as you can—because errors or misunderstandings here will mean rewriting code.

Your specification template should layout clear milestones. If your client writes the functional and user interface design, you should subsequently agree on a set of milestones.

Sometimes these are billing thresholds as well, but at the very least they provide a clear metric toward completion. When possible, milestones should be approximately equal in duration. Of course, this template should be adjusted as-needed. He approaches the document slightly differently, but shares a similar sentiment. What does the application do? What application states high-level descriptions of core user scenarios will the user encounter?

Even if the product owner sends clear illustrations created by a graphic designer, the graphic designer almost always is not also a strong programmer. Prior to a developer writing any code behind the illustrations, you need to have all such questions answered. You can create some clean illustrations using one of many different wireframing tools , and put together a complete set of screen layouts. Just for the record, our favorite wireframing tool is Invision. So, to avoid miscommunication that could turn a three week project into a three month project….

The point here is for the product owner to answer these open ended questions as well as they can, and then for the developer to ask follow up questions once they receive the answers.

As a result, you will dramatically reduce the risk of miscommunication and the need to write additional code. Setting clear milestones for your design document template is key to fully understanding the scope of your project. Okay, now for the part you all quite possibly skipped to before reading everything else, which I of course do not recommend!

This should include items such as, who the intended audience is, and what the overall goal of the project will be. Under the User Requirements section, you may have noticed that we highly recommend taking advantage of a powerful exercise, which is creating user stories. Additionally, here are some more questions you might consider answering in the System Overview section:. These are some wireframe examples for an iOS application, which accurately portray what this should look like….

However, different engineering teams, and even engineers within the same team, often write design docs very differently. A design doc describes the solution to a problem. To start, the following is a list of sections that you should at least consider including in your next design doc:. It should be 3 paragraphs max. I encourage you to break the project down into major user-facing milestones if the project is more than 1 month long. Use calendar dates so you take into account unrelated delays, vacations, meetings, and so on.

It should look something like this:. Add an [Update] subsection here if the ETA of some of these milestone changes, so the stakeholders can easily see the most up-to-date estimates. A user story is a great way to frame this. Keep in mind that your system might have different types of users with different use cases.

Some people call this the Technical Architecture section. Again, try to walk through a user story to concretize this. Feel free to include many sub-sections and diagrams. Provide a big picture first, then fill in lots of details. Aim for a world where you can write this, then take a vacation on some deserted island, and another engineer on the team can just read it and implement the solution as you described. What else did you consider when coming up with the solution above?

What are the pros and cons of the alternatives? Have you considered buying a 3rd-party solution — or using an open source one — that solves this problem as opposed to building your own?

I like including this section, because people often treat this as an afterthought or skip it all together, and it almost always comes back to bite them later when things break and they have no idea how or why.

How will this increase on call and dev-ops burden? How much money will it cost? Does it cause any latency regression to the system? Does it expose any security vulnerabilities?

What are some negative consequences and side effects?