Technical task

Why do you need a technical task?

Technical task development to webservice creation is one of the most technically demanding projects in web development and online portals. Based on many years of experience we can say that the overall success of your project depends on the well-defined technical task. Having not previously established a consistent instruction on all the processes and conditions of development with all its participants, similar to the spontaneous construction of a house, without first working on the miscalculation of construction costs and the preparation of design documents, to make sure that the house that you’re planning to build can be built at all, needs landscape designers engineers and others, I don’t think you would dare to start such a project without prior preparation, the technical tasks for the web service creation is executed in a similar standard, having spent part of the budget on a detailed specification creation , you will prevent the following problems in the future.

• Budget calculation. It is impossible to calculate how much a site or application with a complex architecture will cost until it is decomposed into elements and functions. You may not agree, because perhaps you have already approached various companies with the original or, worse, verbal description of the assignment and received a rating for the project. But don’t be naive - developers, like in any other professionals, will not work for free. As a rule, you received a project calculation based on a «type» of your project with a margin of 50% to base cost, and sometimes twicely. Proceeding the logic «whatever you have invented, we will probably invest in the budget». This kind of calculation is problematic for successful  project completion and is certainly not advantageous for you, because if in your project there is no complex architecture, different functions or integration with third-party services, then most likely you will overpay for project realization. Alternatively, developer will ask you for an additional fee, having reached the maximum number of development hours. Creating a technical task gives you more confidence of getting what you expected for the pre-calculated project budget.
• Saving money on development. You have an idea and perhaps you think, it is simple to implement. But in idea implementation there are often functional and logical features. The clearer requirements and wishes are, the better understanding between two sides, and the greater chance that they will be satisfied with the result. The agreed technical task makes it more likely that developers will develop your project within the specified budget and time frame, and you will not have to spend an additional 30-40 working hours or reverse the functionality.
• Time saving. Technical task absence or it is not cear will thrertainly move deadlines. Long discussions with customer and many, many nerves both from customer, who cannot understand «why he is not understood», and from our project managers because thay have to redo the functional several times. When task is written and worked out, it minimizes overtimes and misunderstandings.

How to form a technical task

Obviously we recommend you to contact our professional team to make detailed project technical task, and then to make correct evaluation for its realization and to specify the dates. But there is another option - if you have limited budget, create a technical task yourself and give it us for evaluation. We will help you to create the technical task for your site. To achieve the correct result, task must contain the following data:

• technical part requirements are the basis. This is what the developers will based on. This task component describes all key nuances of future resource development, from CMS selection to specific features implementation;
• marketing part - is responsible for resource commerciall success. Marketing requirements are described in technical task taking into account company scope of activity its advantages, market situation, level and nature of competition, of target audience characteristics, etc.;
• design, usability, content - this part of technical task for site development is aimed at making the site as user-friendly, interesting and useful as possible.

Each task described in technical should be finite, meaning it should be clear where the particular point ends and the next one begins. There is no place in the document for abstract phrases such as "to make a functional product page". It’s very subjective - someone will need one functional, someone other. But it is not possible to determine whether this point has been done in accordance with technical task.

If you want to develop a simple site and you need to describe a functional module in the task, then analyze sites with similar functionality or use already executed similar projects. Apply links to pages with the desired interface and functions, describe what to do and how to modify this or that example.

Technical task sections details:

• General words - this section introduce the project. Assume that you have to give the technical task to a third party programmer, and you will not be in contact with the project all the time until delivery. That is, programmer has to take the technical task, and he shouldn’t have any questions on it.
• Operational purpose is a benefit that site should bring. This is not a commercial benefit, but more the main objectives: goods site, services, discount site, service provider, informative, news and other.
• Functionality - what technology you need to make the profit described in the previous paragraph. For example, for an internet store it is a goods catalogue, shopping cart, delivery\return information pages and about a company.
• Mapping - create a map or table. This section contains a list of project entities. That is, you need to list the essence attributes that allow you to notice details that could lead to design complications. You can see the examples here.
• Description pages - in most cases this is a fairly short description, as we can use links to data and lists.
• Reliability requirements - if a site with a high workload is planned, it is worth mentioning in advance to avoid embarrassment.

How much the technical task development costs?

Our company deals with several areas of development. We create relatively simple corporate websites, lendings and online stores. We develop chat-bots. In addition, we deal with complex, high-load systems, large portals of CRM and ERP systems. Depending on the type of project, technical task also changes, its scope and duration, although the overall structure remains the same.

• Simple corporate sites, landings, chat bots. As a rule, the main blocks and functionality are repeated from project to project, with minor changes - every nuance we describe carefully in the task. Usually the volume of such technical task is several pages. In this case, discussing the project with the customer takes 1-2 hours and writing the technical task itself without design layouts for another 3-4 hours.
• Complex and large web projects. For high-load sites and complex systems, with many connections, creating a technical task without design layouts requires 5 full working days. Considering that there is an initial material, company’s specialists can rely for technical task creation, usually the writing time is 40-50 hours of working time + 5-10 hours to discuss the specification with the customer.

As a result, the cost of technical task creation depends, in any case, on the number of hours spent by our specialist. Any project needs to be discussed in detail with a customer to define its goals. It has to be considered and written, than presented to customer, edited and evaluated by programmers. We naad to make sure that everything you want is real. It is necessary to set the development hours and than is gives to customer. Trust us, this is a painstaking effort, and we do not recommend our customers to save a couple of hours on technical task development and «finish it quickly».  

In our practice we are faced with situations when customer comes with his technical task. These are usually two reasons:

• Technical task has been compiled in a hurry and resembles rather a list of «wishes» without describing the functionality details. In this case, we are still compiling a new technical task to harmonize all nuances with client, since the same phrase can be interpreted in completely different ways by client, project manager and developer.
• Second option - technical task was developed correctly by the customer himself or via another companies that deals with technical tasks. If it’s a 30-60-page project, we need to spend a lot of time getting into this project, learning all details, and then we can evaluate project. We take 5-10 hours for project evaluation in such cases, and if client concluse the contract, we compensate paid amount to client as part of the development fee.