Why every web app has to have the terms of reference and how to make it right
It all begins with a single idea when someone has a bulb lightened up in their heads indicating that that is it, the new disrupting thing is coming and they are going to make it great. But it turns out that idea is a very vague thing to deal with: the more it goes deeply into details, the more divergebale it becomes to describe the each. That way an ease of getting the end product not the same as it was initially intended puts at a risky verge any endeavor from the very first spark of an initial intention. In developing, it frequently evolves in a conflict between the participants, where the doers can't figure out what they are asked for, while the idea bearers, figuring out that what they want is not the same they eventually get. And the reason for all that is the problem of choosing the right focus of idea inception.
The key
So, what is the focus of inception in the first place? It turns out that the problem of catching the right idea focus goes far beyond the development routine. A statement to be made: bad ideas don't exist, but badly chosen focus is something that makes any idea bad. This is something that can't be touched upon or observed, but, something, the spirit of which is in every part that exists. It is a complex notion, a way more complex than idea itself. There is one well-known approach describing how to create an idea focus, that approach is known as ‘problem solving’. It is claimed that there is some unsolved need, that much disguised, that not everyone has enough wit to unveil it, and one, once, through thinking about this good enough, might come up with an idea of how it can be solved. This whole concept of problem-solving is no other thing than just a way of capturing and holding the initial idea, which helps determine its measures and overall boundaries of its potential inclination. And this is exactly what the focus of idea inception represents.
Michelangelo, Socrates, Ford, and Jobs
The previously described concept is not the only way of coupling this with an idea. Throughout human history, many great minds have discovered their own ways how to percept and look at the phenomenon of idea, and differentiate it from the focus of idea inception, fusing those into as a finite point of the creation. Michelangelo, for example, when was asked about how he managed to create such perfect shapes of his sculptures replied that the sculpture was already within the marble block, and all he had to do is to chisel away the superfluous material. Socrates, on the other hand, developed a method where he, being in a dialogue with a person, asked questions, which eventually led the person to the right conclusion without saying it directly: This study is also known as the Socratic method, the centric concept to which modern Western philosophy descends. Ford once told that if he had asked people what they wanted they would have said faster horses. Jobs, in his turn, never hold testing surveys about Apple new products; because he didn’t trust others opinions, and the side-view suggestions on how the products should look and work seemed to him rather distracting from the main. Keeping all the details in a secret, he preferred to make the revelation of the company new products on stage, at once, for the reporters and the customers alike. There are a lot of ways of finding the right focus, and each such way maybe differ from the other. Speaking of software development, while creating a new application or a part of functionality, one of such ways would be specifying the right terms of reference for a project.
Tips and hints
For a web application, terms of reference is basically an interpretation of an idea through describing its parts. Whereas the initial idea trigger, as well as its various elements, should equally represent the focus of inception. Any idea that has its focus of inception must be easily communicated through a simple formulation, enclosed within a couple of sentences. The same should be also true for project parts, such as a description of separate functional details and each complex element of the system that has a number of functioning features. The most simple way of testing an idea for having its focus of inception right would be answering on the following questions: “Why this particular thing should be included in my app?”, “If is it necessary for my app to have this feature?”, and “What exactly my app lose if I make a decision to remove this feature or this particular functional chunk from it and how much it is critical to have it to represent the main idea?”. If answering these questions is hard for you, or, for some reason, your answers are unclear, complicated, or uncertain, that may imply that the focus of idea inception is not rightly determined. The same goes with your writing the technical part of terms of reference if that is hard to define it, or put it in a well-organized structure, or there is an intention to rewrite or add something. If, on the contrary, you can easily explain what you want as a whole and in every bit of it, and this explanation doesn't rise any contradictory, then you can go further in development, as that indicates you have the right focus of idea inception. That also implies that your idea has all chances to get rightly accepted by all the parties involved in the implementation process, and the resulting deliverable would be exactly the same as you have planned from the beginning, without having any troubles or conflicts of misconception understanding. In this case, the whole journey of creation would be a joy for everyone partaken in the process.
To sum it all up
So to have just an idea, no matter how it seems great, is not enough, and there is a huge possibility to put it at risk of the initial intention getting lost while being in the process of its step-by-step detailing. To prevent that, every idea must have its focus of inception, which, in the nutshell, is a key to understanding what you are really going to create. That makes you able to explain to others your vision and get the result you have been thinking about from the start. Depending on a subject and personal mindset, there is a lot of ways to catch and hold the focus of idea inception, and in software development, one of those ways is to write a project terms of reference that would indicate, by answering simple questions advocating each feature, whether that is set and right. Having that focus set up, also outweigh the importance of different approaches to document the specific requirements for a project, as there is no particular difficulty to elaborate an idea if you know exactly what you expect to get as the result. That way, you will receive a perfect solution, satisfying you and the users of your product, and we will gladly help you with bringing your idea to life.