“What does the spec say it should do?”  These words can come from anyone on the IT team!  We’ve heard them from testers that are verifying functionality.  We’ve heard them from managers asking to understand project progress or approving a future budget.  We’ve heard it from developers that are about to implement functionality.  We’ve heard it from end users that ask about why it works like it does today or hoping for how it will work in the future.  The reason this is an interesting and honest question is because we all expect the intentions of the software to change as we learn more and solve parts of the problem.  The problem is that most teams are moving so fast that we forget to update the spec when we make decisions and implement the functionality in the code or operating environment.  Without a herculean effort by someone on the team, inevitably, the spec becomes stale.  It doesn’t take too long before people stop asking the question because everyone knows that the spec just doesn’t know: it’s stale!

Wouldn’t it be nice if the spec knew about the changes in the project and was able to synchronize to the current plan?  Wouldn’t it be nice if you could push content from your current spec documents into a centralized database that will manage the lifetime of those requirements as they change?  Wouldn’t it be nice if we had document templates that could make it very simple to create new requirements in the project?  Wouldn’t it be nice to change the contents of a document spec and update the centralized database directly from the document?  Wouldn’t it be nice if we could throw away old specs if the formatting and layout of the document just didn’t make sense anymore and create a new spec with the most up-to-date content and new formatting?  Wouldn’t it be amazing to be able to answer the “What does the spec say it should do?” question so many times that your colleagues and constituents one again believe that the spec does in fact describe how the system should work? 

With Personify Design TeamSpec and Microsoft Team Foundation Server, you can!

To learn more about TeamSpec, watch the videos at http://www.personifydesign.com/products/teamspec/discover.aspx.

Download the TeamSpec trial at http://www.personifydesign.com/products/teamspec/download.aspx.

Thanks to everyone in the community that has provided feedback during the betas.  We really appreciate your expertise and cannot wait to see the types of specs you create using TeamSpec!  Send email to teamspec@personifydesign.com and tell us about how you’re using TeamSpec- we love to see your creations!