For those people who request project from freelancers, here is a tip that can help you be more clear when it comes to project requirements. It is by experience that we say that you can encounter problems if you don’t detail good project requirements to your chosen freelancer.
First of all, let’s clarify, good project requirements doesn’t mean detailed project requirements. Project requirements can be lengthy and detailed but might not really be good. This is important to take into consideration because many times we tend to explain so many things about the project we need but the way we explain it is sometimes to general or too vague.
Vague requirements actually don’t give a freelancer a complete picture of all the work that is required and even gives the impression to freelancers that the work required is really simple as it sounds when in reality it might not be like that.
Furthermore, vague or too general requirements often are cause of problems along the development process of the project as freelancer encounters that the work required is more than what they originally expected thus resulting in freelancer requesting more money for the work.
So the best way to go if you are an employer or buyer that requests projects is to detail your requirements in a bulleted way. In this way, you explain what are each of the modules required for the project and below each module you explain with bullets each and everything that will be required for the project along with a description for each bullet. There are other ways to create good documentation but this is just a suggested way. For example:
Module #1
- Bullet one: Description #1
- Bullet two: Description #2
- Bullet three: Description #3
Module #2
- Bullet one: Description #1
- Bullet two: Description #2
- Bullet three: Description #3
Module #3
and so on…
If you are not really clear about what each module should have then its important that you ask your chosen freelancer to detail the requirements for you of everything that will be done and to suggest ideas right before the project starts not while the project has already started. Try to define all requirements clearly right from the beginning in order to avoid problems during development time.
