What it means to "scope" your web development project

But your idea is just the start: the very first stage of your custom web development project is the scoping stage. It may not be the most exciting step, but it is the most critical to helping us deliver that exceptional web development that we’re known for.

Sounds scary. What does "scope" mean for my project?

Not scary at all - basically, scoping your project is us evolving your idea and expanding on your points to detail the intricacies of your project. Otherwise known as dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, in a way.

We ask you questions. We collaborate. We review your business processes (and integrations) and propose ideas to help your project achieve success. It’s a time where we nut out the details of your project - what your users need to do with the site, what sort of interfaces will they need to see, what we need to build for the backend for your day-to-day business and reporting, what sorts of rules and validations need to take place, and plan the pathway through the build process.

See, that’s not scary, is it? It’s actually really exciting - thinking about your web app’s potential - and how much it can help your business. OK, yes, really exciting. Although maybe that’s the nerd factor rearing its head too. This sort of stuff really does excite us.

But I’m not a tech head

Good. So it is a good thing that we are.

You don’t need to be a tech head or developer to get involved. We are the nerds in the relationship, and want to know about your business and how you tick - we then translate your everyday business processes in to tech talk for the developers to build.

The scope is written in such a way that you can understand it - but also include some technical information for the development team too.

What do I need to do?

Be involved is the biggest thing - we’ll ask questions, and want to talk to you about so many little fine details. We’d love you to be involved with these decisions and committed to the project.

You don’t need to write the scope - that’s what we do - but we want you to be available to help us with our queries and ideas, discuss suggestions and concepts and be present so we can map out project.

What is the outcome?

At the end of the scoping process, we will have a document that we can all use through the design and build stages of the project.

This can be quite lengthy, but includes all of the details of exactly what will be built - and depending on your project, may include things like wireframe mock-ups, and lists of data requirements and types, and also specific workflows that are important to your project.

You can use this document to make sure we understand your requirements - and we can use this document to build your project - so that we’re all working from the same page.

While definitely not the most glamorous stage of your project, the creation of your project scope is pivotal to achieving success - it defines the boundaries of your project, highlights the goal, and give us all a clear direction to work towards. Our team have over two decades of web development experience, and have found detailed upfront scoping to be of invaluable importance to the development process. As they say, "a stitch in time saves nine".

Do you have an idea for a brilliant new web site or web app? Our dev team love working with new ideas - including the full scoping stage - and excel at delivering reliable, quality and robust apps for the web. Better yet, we're friendly too - so give us a call and say hello.