Custom Request Templates

Question

What kind of information do you require from the project management team before you can proceed on a project?

Is there a certain format they utilize on Programming Requests which helps you to understand exactly how the development team can succeed with this project.

Example: I always like it when project managers mock up forms. It helps significantly to know how they are visualizing the UI for many tasks.

Any suggestions on how we can assist the Project Management team in issuing Programming Requests that are as clear as day will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Here's a few from my personal list:

• Why? - Perhaps not quite what you're looking for, but as a developer I always want to know that the problem I'm solving matters. If I can see the need for a solution; If I can see the benefit to clients and the business, It helps drive me to work harder on it. If I feel like the project doesn't matter, or that a trained monkey could do it, I'll still get the job done, but the drive just isn't there.
• Prioritized Desired Features - Think something like agile story planning. What features are critical? What features would be neat, but aren't as critical. I don't want to get caught up fighting to get feature A working if it's not going to be used as much as feature B.
• Workflows / Mockups - You mentioned this, but to add my thoughts what are clients thoughts on how things should work? How do they currently get by without this feature? This might help with the above, and give me some starting points.
• Removal of Barriers - Help me find resources needed for development / testing. Help me conform to any required regulatory measures, and help me develop ways to meet such things in a streamlined manner. A concrete example of the last one: The company I work for must document code reviews for shipped features. (Code reviews are always a good idea, but I'm specifically talking about the regulatory aspect). This process used to require a physical meeting (which interrupts people and is hard to schedule), with paper signatures that needed to be collected, additional changes documented, scanned, and archived. After project managers worked with developers and regulatory affairs, they found that we could meet these regulatory requirements with online code reviews, digital signatures, and inserting a hyperlink into our online change system... fits much better into my workflow.)

Hopefully this is along the lines of what you're looking for, if I think of some more I might add to this list later.