The 7th part of our project management series I would like to dedicate to the customer & requirement specification.

Customer specification

The CEO is the initiator of in-house development projects. He or she thus is responsible for the project costs and the application of the result. The project management team does not come into play until the responsible colleague, who has conducted the basic research, pretests, a feasibility study and the coordination of the project, has generated a basic customer specification.
The same procedure applies equally for customer projects.

Without the comprehensive pre-work in the sales team along with a good communication to assess optimum customer specifications, the project management team could not create a complete and consistent requirement specification. To support the customer in generating the customer specification the project management teams provides templates for the different product types, which then can or have to be filled with content by the customer (in cooperation with the sales dept.).
An exaggerated involvement of the project management already at this stage would lead to a lack of time for the defined tasks in ongoing projects.

Requirement specification

Based on the demands of the customer specification, the requirement specification is generated, of which the project manager is fully responsible. Often it makes sense to compile the requirement specification as a pre-project on a small scale.
The approval of the requirement specification always is carried out in written form. The customer and the head of development sign a form, which is part of every requirement specification.
Two other important milestones in the product generation process are also recorded on a form in the requirement specification and require to be mutually signed: the transfer of prototypes to the initiator and, of course, the project completion.

Don’t miss the previous parts in this series:
Part I (https://mobacommunity.com/blogs/entry/The-MOBA-Project-Management-Part-1)
Part II (https://mobacommunity.com/blogs/entry/The-MOBA-Project-Management-Part-2)
Part III (https://mobacommunity.com/blogs/entry/The-MOBA-Project-Management-Part-3)
Part IV (https://mobacommunity.com/blogs/entry/The-MOBA-Project-Management-Part-4)
Part V (https://mobacommunity.com/blogs/entry/The-MOBA-Project-Management-Part-5)
Part VI (https://mobacommunity.com/blogs/entry/The-MOBA-Project-Management-Part-6)

To be continued…