What is Elaboration Phase and Why is It Important?

Nine out of ten of our new project discussions come or even start with the questions like “How long will it take?” or “How much will it cost?”. And it is important to understand that project evaluation is impossible without a clear understanding of the scope of work, technical details, usage scenarios, integrations to be made, etc.

That is why we introduce the Elaboration Phase as a part of the product development cycle.

What is the Elaboration Phase?

In a nutshell, it is a pre-development stage of the project’s creation. It helps to define the project’s scope and clarify all the requirements and user flows, allowing to evaluate the time and cost required for the development stage. Our specialists are analysing all the future product’s technical details, creating clear wireframes and high-level solution descriptions along the way.

As a result of the elaboration phase, a client will get a full-fledged explanation of what technical solutions and what tools will be used in the process. Also, we forecast possible issues that might arise and provide mitigation strategies. All of this is done to estimate the cost of the resources required to complete each planned project activity and set a timeframe for it.

Elaboration Stages

The elaboration phase can take from 2 weeks to a couple of months, depending on the project’s scale and complexity. It is paid and requires the skills and time of the project/product manager and development specialists.

Requirements Clarification

The starting point is the preliminary analysis of customer requirements. It is performed by a project/product manager or a business analyst working closely with a client to fully define the scope. The customer has to provide as much information as possible about how they see the final product, what functionality they need, and the main principles of its operation. We generate these data by conducting a question-answer session with a customer. Every detail is of paramount importance and should be properly documented.

Wireframing and Prototyping

A wireframe is a visual representation of the product that outlines its functionality, basic elements, and transitions between them. This task is performed by a product manager or UX designer. We create clear wireframes using special tools like Figma or InVision to describe the functionality with detailed, logically associated screenshots.

We also can create a clickable prototype that is great for demo purposes, users surveys and fundraising.

Technical Specification

Our solution architect or senior developers determine and analyse requirements from the technical side and create a high-level solution architecture description with technology stack and infrastructure setup suggestions.

Feature Breakdown and Estimation

Our team breaks down the project into features, and developers and designers estimate them one by one. Then, the project manager organises everything into a clear roadmap with milestones and timelines to keep the project on track.

Requirements Documentation and Proposal

Product manager gathers all the information from the previous steps into the high-level requirements document and Development Phase proposal

Documentation usually include:

• project overview
• solution architecture and infrastructure
• main features and user flows
• design references
• third-party integrations
• out of scope functionality for the future implementation
• team structure
• time and cost estimation
• roadmap and timeline

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Why is it Useful to both Customers and Developers?

Elaboration phase is a good way to make sure that both parties expectations are matched in terms of time, money and resources.

Developers have all the needed information to provide the accurate project evaluation and minimise risks of unexpected issues to raise during implementation

Customers can get a realistic time and budget for the whole solutions, and understand if they have enough resources. Also, having all the requirements and wireframes, it is easier to fundraise and look for the partners.

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