Pineapple Workshop’s T-Shirt — A Guide

What is a T-Shirt and why is it part of our client onboarding process?

The third stage of our client onboarding process is delivering the client a T-Shirt. When we say a T-Shirt, we do not mean a literal t-shirt to wear as clothing. Our version of a T-Shirt is a rough project scoping and cost estimate based on project details and assets a client has delivered to us.

When a client is shopping for developers to build their project, clients will often have introductions with different teams to get a feel for the chemistry of the potential partnership, receive cost estimations, understand the developers past experience and the developers level of knowledge.

The largest knowledge gap in building an application exists between the development team and the client. A good client should have a firm grasp of the software’s use case, the problem the software is trying to solve and the app’s functionality. The potential client must relay this information to the developer or development team. This can be done in the form of a written scope of work (SoW) or Figma files the client may have created.

After our team receives information on the software’s use case, the problem the software is trying to solve and its functionality, it is then our turn to inform the client what technology will be necessary to develop the platform. The T-Shirt bridges the gap between the technological understanding and the use case/functionality of the app.

Our T-Shirt usually have the following information:

• A section relaying our understanding of the applications use case and the necessary technology
• Rough project scoping in terms of milestones
• A brain dump of what team members will be needed and their rates
• A rough cost range to develop the application

After delivering the T-Shirt we schedule a follow up meeting to discuss any doubts or questions the client may have. If all parties are on the same page, then we create a contract.

We hope this article helped you learn a bit about how we onboard new projects. For more information on our client onboarding process, please visit our article: What does our development process look like?