The presentation slides are at the bottom of this post.
Face it, most people don’t like doing documentation. It’s about as appealing as the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard. But, it’s also a vital part of doing business. When new projects come through the door, the customer brings with them a list of expectations, assumptions, and (usually) misconceptions they then try to communicate to you with the hopes of turning their ideas into a product. This laundry list of “stuff” needs to be documented, clarified and generally sorted out so a clear idea of what they’re really wanting can be formed.
When that time comes, a Statement of Work document should be your go-to tool. It’s a formal, structured document with legal standing that isn’t hard to write and provides benefit to your team and clients. For your customer, it’s:
A) Professional. They like getting paperwork like this. It shows they you’re serious about your craft.
B) Reassuring. It forces all involved parties to make sure both have a clear understanding of where the project is heading and what is involved. When everyone is on the same page, life is easier.
For you team, it is even better. The benefits for the customer carry over in many cases, but your team also benefits in these ways:
A) Eliminate Waste. A SoW means details that are important to the client have been sorted out. There’s no need to waste time working it turns out the client doesn’t want.
B) Minimize Creep and Bloat. Your team can fall back on the document to determine if what they’re doing is meeting what was agreed upon or if it’s going too far above-and-beyond. That’s not to say that you can’t do extra to really keep your customer happy. What it means is you have nice, safe, defined bounds to retreat to if things get hairy.
C) Protection. Sometimes customers become a nightmare. Nonpayment, perpetual “hey, do this too” requests, etc… it happens. The SoW is a legal document you can use to determine if you’ve met your contractual obligations.
My RefreshOKC presentation covered it briefly, breaking down the individual parts and giving some examples of what to include in each section.
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Once a year we load up the cars and make the long drive to Austin, TX for the weird and wonderful event known as Pablo’s Fiesta. Honestly, I’m not sure how it got the name, but this open spaces conference is huge for us. Our friends from Dovetail Software are there, along with most of the FubuMVC community. We talk about .NET/C#, Dungeons & Dragons, Rails, the magical powers of Git, and whatever else comes up. At least, that’s what we’ve done in the past. Being an Open Spaces event, we won’t know what the topics are this year until we get there.
