There are opportunities abound to better serve your customers and improve your organization with investments in custom software. There are also countless ways to burn money in the process on marginally valuable software. This will be the first in a series of tips to avoid pouring your money down the drain and instead invest in software with an exponential return on investment.
If you’re new to investing in software, you’re going to encounter droves of mindless organizations, books, white papers, articles, etc, that suggest creating ridiculously nuanced technical requirements or specifications for the software. As if somehow you should already be an expert at building software if you want to reach out for help. Don’t listen to any of this nonsense.
Would you go to a doctor that expected you to provide instructions about how to perform your annual physical? Would you take your car to a mechanic that expected you to provide instructions on how to fix your car? Would you use a lawyer that expected you to tell him how to write a legal contract?
There are droves of software development organizations and supposed experts that expect you to create the instructions for how the software will be built. That’s just outrageous. Run from these organizations.
Your business is your expertise. You need an expert you can rely on so you can focus on the outcome in terms of impact on your business.
If you want to be wildly successful, you need an expert that can listen to your needs in terms of the impact on your business. And then, at the appropriate time, they should translate those needs into requirements that will create your desired outcome. Real experts will make the requirements transparent. Requirements are something you don’t want to deal with and aren’t a valuable use of your time to obsess over.
Technical requirements are like toilet paper, you need them to be good, but you shouldn’t have to bring your own when you need to go to the bathroom.