How to write an effective brief to technology service vendors?

1. Begin with the overview

You should begin your brief with the big picture of the project. Shortly describe what your business or startup is about. Explain the role of application in your general business strategy and what do you expect to achieve; as well as provide some information about your audience and competitors as it may be valuable for design, delivery and final user testing.

2. List the features

If you already have an idea of the features you want to implement, list them in priority order or divide into two separate sections – what is must have and what is nice to have. This will help developers to understand which elements of the project are crucial, and which can be developed in the future. Be noted that the common practice, when creating a new product, is to start with MVP, shape the initial concept based on real user feedback and then go to additional features. Also, remember to provide any designs, sketches, wireframes, logos, everything that helps to illustrate your vision.

3. Technical requirements

At this point, you don’t need to deep into dive into technical specifications. However, in order to help developers define a tech stack, provide some related information. For example: Which devices your app should run on? Do you want to build a product from scratch or redesign/complete existing software? Does it require data synchronization? Should your application work offline? Do you need integration with external services/databases? Such aspects are very useful for evaluating the complexity of the project.

4. Timeline and Budget

Another significant element of the brief is whether you have desired timeframes for project delivery. It’s also helpful to provide a clear indication of your budget. This information gives programmers an idea of what can be achieved by that means.