There are several schools of thought when it comes to how much you pre-plan your application and how much your developers develop it with agility, i.e. according to so-called “agile” practices. Our take is that “Agile” has been misinterpreted by many a failed startup as an excuse to operate without a proper plan.

However it goes deeper than that: we believe there are different best practices depending on the scenario. If you’re a funded startup (i.e. with funding in the millions), you have the luxury of refining an iterative process where you explore what you want to develop in small steps. You also have more experienced developers that often have worked together who have already mastered their iterative process. For new startups, this is a costly phase where you figure out your development process. So if you only have $50k-150k for your project, you’re in a completely different boat, and you simply cannot afford that. You have to operate completely differently. We believe it boils down to 1 thing you absolutely must do differently: completely plan what you will get for your $50-150k. This means you means you must know exactly what you plan to launch to the public in your initial offering. And this requires a greater degree of what has been often, and pejoratively, called “crystal ball” planning. This is where we excel at FaceySpacey and what we’d like to teach you. The process can of course be applied if you’re fortunate enough to be able to iterate more. It’s just being able to imagine your product properly and at a granular level.

The speccing process we’ll cover in the following tutorials includes these components:

1) SCOPE OPTIMIZATION

2) INTRO TO BUILDING PAGE LAYOUTS

3) FINDING INFLUENCES

4) ORGANIZED WRITTEN SPECS

5) TASK ORGANIZATION & BUGTRACKING (Fogbugz)

6) DATABASE DESIGN

7) APPLICATION ARCHITECTURE

8) SPRINT PLANNING (And More on Fogbugz)