The structure of the technical task

Writing a technical task is one of the first stages of work on a project. It precedes the development of the system itself. In the terms of reference, we describe the subject area, the existing infrastructure of the Customer, the requirements for the created functionality, as well as non-functional requirements. The resulting document is necessary both for a business user in order to make sure that all his wishes for the future system are taken into account, and for us to estimate the cost of developing a system.

It is worth noting that in our daily analytical work we try to avoid the term “Terms of Reference”. This term is too overloaded with meanings and it is often unclear what is behind it. We use the terms Business requirements document (BRD), Functional requirements document (FRD), and Technical Architecture document (TAD). However, here, in order not to complicate the description, we will use the term "Terms of Reference". The document that we in most cases use to interact with customers consists of 70% of business requirements, 20% of functional requirements and only 10% of technical and architectural requirements. Of course, this proportion varies depending on the specifics and technical complexity of the system.

Correct communication with the customer is the main success factor in the development of technical specifications. After all, the task of analysts is to actually perform a brain-dump operation, and put the results on paper in a structured way. At the same time, it is very important (1) to speak with the customer in the same language so that he does not have to chew on the concepts of the subject area that are obvious to a specialist and (2) be able to listen correctly.

Below are the principles that guide us in writing the technical assignment, and will illustrate them with excerpts from our technical specifications for a multi-component banner advertising system for a large Internet company.

The structure of the technical task

Each technical task contains several mandatory sections. They define the purpose of the document, terminology, the general context of the project. Usually the first part of the document looks like this: freelance technician

1. Table of contents

2. History of document changes

3. Project participants

4. Purpose of the document

5. Terminology

6. General context

If at the beginning of the document general, conceptual information about the system being developed is given, then in the second, main part of the document, business requirements and functional requirements for the system that are essential for assessing the cost of development are detailed.

In the "Terminology" section of the technical specifications for the banner system, we define such concepts as Impressions, Clicks, CTR, Reach, Contact Frequency, Booking file, etc., and in the "General Context" section, we describe the main business processes of the customer company, related to the placement of banner advertisements, as well as the system environment, the current roles of company managers and access rights. It should be noted that in this particular case, the system was not built from scratch. Previously, the company's managers used a different, different from ours, banner advertising system. Otherwise, the analysis of roles and access rights would most likely be placed in a separate chapter.

7. Banner placement system

8. Interaction with billing

9. Banner Engine

10. Technical description of the Banner Engine component

The most voluminous section of the terms of reference described by us is "Banner placement system"; it is dedicated to the core of the system being developed and contains all the requirements directly to the ad space management system. Taking into account the specifics of this project, we devoted a separate section to the interaction of the banner with the billing system. Also, in a separate section, we highlighted the requirements for a fairly independent component for collecting and displaying statistical information, which is almost the main component of the system for customers of advertising campaigns and managers of advertising agencies.

A separate section of the technical assignment describes the requirements for the Banner Engine component responsible for displaying banners, accounting statistics, processing it and saving it in a form suitable for further analysis and reporting.

This is technically the most difficult and most heavily loaded component of the banner system. In the TK, we have included a section containing some technical and architectural details related to the Banner Engine. First of all, this allows you to minimize risks when assessing the cost of developing a system, because depending on the chosen architecture, the labor intensity can differ significantly.

Each technical task differs in size, number of illustrations, number of versions. For example, a banner document is presented on 44 pages and contains 15 illustrations. The process of preparing this document took about a month and included about 8 iterations with the customer.