According to Arthur Carmazzi, there are four different types of brain. These four types are color-coded into Green, Blue, Red, and Purple. Each type perceives the day-to-day productivity challenges uniquely. For example, one may have chaotic and random patterns for organizing their work, while others have sophisticated and well-planned strategies.
One of the challenges that many leaders of software development companies face today is to recognize the different working patterns of each member of their team.
When it comes to scoping an entire software development project may pose a daunting task for these leaders. You may notice how the term ‘manager’ has been replaced by ‘leader.’ That is because most employees today like to be leaders rather than being managed.
This is a key approach in today’s fast-paced working environments – leading the team is better than managing them.
However, there is more to understanding each step toward implementing a viable project scope
1) Where to Begin with Scoping a Software Development Project?
This is the era of information flooding. Every topic has hundreds of thousands of blogs and articles on the internet. As a software development company leader, you cannot flip through all the results that land on a search engine. When you have successfully won a client, their long-term goal is already defined.
You have all the resources at hand, and the deadline is approaching – it is common to be overwhelmed at this stage. But there has to be a starting point. So don’t worry; we have sorted it out for you in easy, decomposed steps.
These steps are a mix of Agile methodology and Computational Thinking (CT). Any software development company can make the most of this approach.
2) Step 1: Discovery (Consider only the important details of the Project Scope)
According to computational thinking (CT), abstraction is the name of neglecting unimportant details. It also aims at prioritizing the most important and urgent tasks at hand. While doing this, you must consider the end-users of your custom software development project.
Identifying all the end-users of this custom software is the ‘discovery’ part of the Agility model. In this step, you will translate the end-users objectives into functional parts.
In simple words, whatever the client needs to achieve through custom software development must be tied to the working of the software under development.
We also need to determine what technology to use for a specific project, such as PHP, WordPress, Python, MEAN Stack, MERN Stack, Shopify development, React Native, etc.
3) Step 2: Analyze, Forecast, and Decide (Break down the Main tasks of the Project Scope into Smaller Sub Tasks)
Once you have identified all the end-users and the objectives of the software, you can quickly move forward with the decomposition. This means that you will break down the main tasks into several sub-tasks.
These sub-tasks can then be assigned to the respective departments or teams of your custom software development company. While the tasks are being assigned, estimations and forecasts are being made; remember to incorporate Agility, which is constant collaboration between the teams.
That way, when you move to step three, most of the complexities of the project scope will already become simple. As a result, you will be able to see substantial progress on the project scope by the end of step two.
4) Step 3: Detailed Design (Prioritize the Tasks and Set their Order)
When you have achieved a succinct framework for going about the project, all there needs to be done is to finalize the algorithms. Writing algorithms, as per CT, can be in any form, such as designing a process flow chart, writing steps in order of priority, or detailing the final developmental stages of the software.
As a software development company, you can always have different aspects and approaches for each custom software type. The key is to incorporate those aspects every step of the way.
5) Step 4: Review (Final Revisions before the Submission)
This is the final step before you send a completed project scope document to the software development partner. This is where you review every process that leads up to this point.
You may consider sending the drafted project document form to the stakeholders for review. Once they approve it, you can continue to be productive on the project along with your team.
Final Thoughts
Assembling a project scope form can be overwhelming for project managers. However, taking the step-by-step approach described above can make things more straightforward. The process described above is a mix of Agility methodology and Computational Thinking.
Most software development companies utilize the agility methodology alone for scoping their projects. This is a very successful approach, but sometimes, formulating a custom strategy out of two viable methods can do wonders for you.
