Technical requirements for custom web site development

Web site development is a very important stage in any company development and growth. Site can serve as an advertising brochure in Internet, providing a user with information about the company, or can be an integral part of company's work process, serving as an Internet representation of a company. Should a company elaborate a document containing all requirements to a web site and what exactly should this document contain?

The main thing is that, irrespective of its functions and the tasks it is entrusted with, web site should fully fit the spirit and the principles of the company. That is why you should be very serious when deciding to develop a web site. And in order to get exactly what you need in the end of the development, you need to clearly define site requirements.

So, requirements specification (RS) is a code of all web site requirements. RS is an integral part of agreement between a client and developers: it should contain description of all stages of site development, the core and tasks of development works, functional elements tasks; programming rules, constraints and testing and project estimation methods should be defined. RS presence will make work of both parties easier and will allow testing the end result of the work.

That is why attention and scrupulosity are necessary for the RS working out.
So, RS should include the following parts:

1. General information on the project.
In this part, time-frame of site development is defined;
information on project financing is given;
order of providing with work results is defined, etc.

2. Site purpose and goals.
In this part, site aims are defined, kind of activity which should be realized via web site is described, etc.

3. Site characteristics.
In this part of the RS site functioning and operation conditions are described, constraints and limitations (for example, on volume of information stored in the database) are determined, etc.

4. Web site design requirements.
Site style and design requirements are described. Elements which should present on every site page are named.

5. Web site navigation structure.
We recommend you to describe web site navigation structure. This will help client to see the content structure and to prepare it correctly later on.

6. Site functionality requirements.
In this part, requirements to the site as a whole and requirements to site functions and tasks are described.

7. Content requirements.
These requirements can be set only if developers take responsibility for site content development. If you develop the content yourself, this part of RS is irrelevant.

8. Structure and content of site development work.
In this part of the RS work stages and phases, every stage completion time-frames, certain work carrying-out instructions are listed, etc.

9. Order of control and work acceptance by client.
Work acceptance requirements, kinds and methods of testing are described.

RS can be worked out either by a single specialist or by a group. A group of specialists can be small (2—5 people), it should include specialists in marketing, Internet-consulting and be headed by a project manager. The perfect variant if the group also includes client’s marketing specialist.

Despite the fact that this article is devoted to custom web site development, all the above-listed requirements, except for the issue #5, can also relate to custom software development.

By Development for the Masses, your Internet business solution company.