Specification Table
As a worker in a corporation, you will have hundreds of chances to cooperate with your coworkers to fulfill a project. To get effective communications, Spec. Table is widely used to support the process. What benefits does Spec. Table brings to the team?
In a project, generally there is a PM, project manager, to supervise the whole working process. PM plays an important role in a project. Let me give you a short statement about the duties of PM.
1. Communicate with everyone related to project.
On one side, PM will communicates with his superior and clients to receive their opinions and expectations about the project. On the other side, you will have lots of conversations with your team to get their thoughts and resolve the problems they meet.2. Examine the feasibility of project.
Consider human resources, budget, and other constraints to create a team.3. Formulate a comprehensive time schedule.
This schedule should include tasks and their own start time and deadline. You also can add the resource and restriction of project into schedule. The schedule can give PM an overview of the working process and easily control the progress.4. Draw up a reasonable and efficient Spec. Table.
Spec. Table doesn’t have a standard version. PM can customize Spec. Table based on the culture of the corporation or habits of the team. If this Spec. can lead the team to cooperate successfully, it is a good Spec. Table.
When PM makes a consensus with clients, PM will start the project. At this time, PM needs to do three things.
Work Division
When the project starts, PM shall separately distribute work to every team member. PM can follow the principles listed below to divide work.
- Specialism
- Working Stage
I won’t talk details about division work. There aren’t standard rules. When you want to divide the jobs, you should consider different situations in the project. Restraints may include budget, time, human resources, and so on. Choosing the best way to give work division is a big topic for PM.
Formulate Specification Table
Formulating Spec. Table is the main point of this article. What is the meaning of Spec. Table? What benefits can Spec. Table bring?
Assume we have a project, and this project was divided into three scopes (parts), A, B, and C. These three scopes might individually use data from other scopes.
For example, the worker in charge of A scope needs output data from B and C to achieve the functions. At this time, Spec. Table is significant. Spec. Table lists all information about every scope. Include the description of A scope’s operation, the data which should be passed into A as input argument and the data should be delivered to other scopes from A as returned value.
One of the crucial things about Spec. Table is that it needs to record the format for the certain data which would be passed in or passed out. Knowing the formats can reduce the possibility of incorrect data transmission.
If every scope knows the format of data, these scopes can develop simultaneously. Each scope can continue developing and determines the form of arguments according to Spec. Table. You don’t need to worry that the data being passed is in an unwanted format. This method can shorten the total cost time of the project. Improve the efficiency.
Example Project: Calculator
Take a programming project for a calculator for example. We can create a “spec.md” file.
First, divide this project into three parts, Input, Calculate, and Output. Let’s check precautions about work parts first.
Input Part
I list functions that will be implemented in the Input Part and also show the data formats of functions. Draw a table to confirm specifications. Show in the following picture.
Adding comments to the table can make details be more clear.
Example code:
Calculate Part
Also, list the functions which should be implemented, including plus, minus, multiple, and division. As you can see that the input arguments of every function in the Calculate Part are from the output value of the Input Part. Because the data format has been determined, the engineer can easily understand how is the input parameters comes from.
Example code :
Output Part
Receive the returned value of the Calculate Part and send the result to the user. The input data formats are determined by the output of the Calculate Part— int. Use print(result) to show it to the user.
Entire code:
Conclusion of Spec. Table.
Formulating a Specification Table is not easy work. PM should know the project well. Try to find better methods to complete the project and avoid some hidden risks or traps that may make the project a mess. PM should keep exchanging opinions between team members. Find out a more convenient and more efficient way to cooperate. Repeatedly modify Spec. Table until all the team members can collaborate efficiently and smoothly. That is the main effect of the specification table.
Set Time Schedule
Pre-formulating the time schedule is necessary. In addition to listing the task’s name and their own started and ended time, setting milestones during the project can help PM to check the project’s progress. Preserving some flexible time in the project can prevent teams from being panic when some unexpected incidents happen.
Bar Chart and Gantt Chart are good time-schedule tools. The following link will teach you how to draw a Gantt chart.
