PracticeByte - Common Mistakes: Functional Specification for Web Development

 

What are pitfalls that companies should avoid when specifying Web applications for internal or external development?

 

Ineffective functional specification for Web projects such as Web sites, Intranets or Portals contribute largely to delays, higher costs or in applications that do not match the expectations. Independent if the Web site, Intranet or Portal is custom developed or built on packaged software such as Web-, enterprise content management or portal software, the functional specification sets the foundation for project delays and higher costs. To limit delays and unexpected investments during the development process, the following pitfalls should be avoided: 

 

1. Too vague or incomplete functional specification: This is the most common mistake that companies do. Everything that is ambiguously or not specified at all, developers do not implement or implement in a different way of what site owners want. This relates primarily to Web features that are considered as common user expectations. For example, HTML title tags, which are used to bookmark Web pages. The Web steering committee may specify that each page contains a page title, but does not specify that HTML Title tags needs to be implemented as well. Web developers therefore may do not implement HTML Title tags or implement them in a way, which differs from site owners' visions. There are other examples such as error handling on online forms or the definition of ALT texts for images to comply with the disability act section 508.

 

These examples look like details but in practice, if developers need to modify hundreds or even thousands of pages, it amounts to several man-days or even man-weeks. Especially, the corrections for images as business owners need first to define the image names prior that Web developers can implement the ATL texts. Ambiguous functional specification can result due to the lack of internal or external missing usability skills. In this case, a one-day usability best practice workshop transfers the necessary or at least basic usability skills to the Web team. It is recommended, even for companies that have usability skills or rely on the subcontractor's skill set, that an external and neutral consultant reviews the functional specification. Especially, as such reviews relate to marginal spending as compared to the total Web investments (e.g. about $10 K - $15 K dollars for a review or Quality Web site Assurance) 

 

2. Future site enhancement not identified or not communicated: It is crucial that the Web committee identifies at least the major future site enhancements and communicates them to the development team. In the best case, the development team knows the roadmap for the coming three years. Such an approach allows the development team to anticipate implementation choices to host future site enhancements. It is more cost effective on mid- or long-term to invest more in the beginning and to build a flexible solution. If Web teams do not know or even ignore future enhancements, the risk for higher investment increases (e.g. adding new functionality in the future results in partially or at worst in totally rebuilding existing functionality). Looking at the financial delta for a flexible solution versus a solution just satisfying the current requirements, the flexible solution has proven to be more cost-effective in practice from a mid- and long-term perspective. 

 

3. Planned functionality not aligned with internal resources: Many companies look at site functionality only from a site visitor perspective (e.g. facilitation of searching information or performing transaction) and corporate benefits (e.g. financial benefits of self-service features). However, there is a third dimension the impact of site functionality on internal resources. Site functionality that can heavily impact internal resources are for example:

 

i) Web sites: providing news, online recruitment, online support, etc.

ii) Intranets / portals: providing content maintenance functionality for business managers

 

It is crucial for the success of site functionality that the Web committee analyzes the impact and takes actions to ensure operations of the planned functionality. For example, providing the content maintenance functionality to business owners and product mangers with an associated workflow. This functionality is effective and can generate business benefits such as reduced time to market. However, in practice, business owners and product managers will need to write, validate, review, approve and retire content. This results in additional workload. If the Web committee has not defined in the Web governance (processes, policies, ownership and potentially enforcement), it may happen that this functionality is not used and hence becomes useless.

 

4. Wish lists versus actual needs and business requirements: The functional specification is not aligned with user's needs or business requirements. This is more common for internal applications such as Intranets or portals. In many cases, the project committee neglects to perform a sound internal survey and defines functionality by generalizing individual employees' wishes without any sound proves. Capturing the feedback of internal users across the organization allows determining the critical functionality. To effectively perform a survey a representative set of employees need to be questioned.

 

Further these employees need to be categorized into profiles. The profiles need to be characterized by for example, frequency of usage of the Intranet, estimated duration by visit, usage of the Intranet to facilitate their daily tasks, contribution to the business, etc. Based on this information the Web team can then prioritize the functionality and choose the most effective and relevant functionality for the next release. Less critical or less important functionality may be part of future releases (roadmap) or dropped. If such a sound decision process is not performed, it may happen that functionality is developed but only used by few users and the return of investment is not achieved.

 

 

5. Not enough visual supports or purely text based: Textual description of Web applications can be interpreted subjectively and hence leading to wrong expectations. To avoid setting wrong expectations, which may are only discovered during development or at worst at launch time, functional specification need to be complemented by visual supports (e.g. screenshots or at best HTML prototypes for home pages or any major navigation pages like sub-home pages for the major sections of the site such as for human resources, business units, finance, etc.). This allows reducing subjective interpretation and taking into account the users' feedback prior development. Such an approach helps setting the right expectations and to avoid any disappointments at the end once the new application is online.

We have observed these common mistakes, independently if companies have developed their Web applications internally or subcontracted them to an external service provider.