Introduction to Scoping

Now that you've selected a development partner, you are ready to move on the next step: scoping your work. As a rule of thumb, we spend as much time on this phase as all other pre-development phases combined. If that seems excessive, contact us at [email protected] and we'd be happy to share countless stories of scope creep and miscommunication of scope.

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At best, improper scoping leads to spending a little more money or taking a little longer to deliver the product. At worst, improper scoping leads to receiving a product that is completely different from what you wanted, resulting in lost money and worst of all, lost time.

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As a startup or small business, you want to be sure you are optimizing the money you spend on software development. The best way to do this is by meticulously scoping out the functionality you want in a way that makes sense to your developers.

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There's way too much information about scoping for us to fit it all in this playbook, but we'll walk through some key concepts including:

• Defining modules
• Defining features
• Writing user stories
• Deciding whether you want a Minimum Viable Product (and learning to scope one)
• Timeline considerations
• Defining milestones to wrap your scope
• Choosing a technology/technologies to build your product