Consulting on Requirements Specifications and RFP for IT Projects

Are you looking to hire an agency or service provider but struggling to write requirements specifications? We’d be happy to advise you—because we know what it’s like from the other side.

Maybe you’ve been there: You’re looking for a service provider and need to define your requirements so you can request quotes—for IT projects or design services, for example. But to do that, you actually need a service provider. A chicken-and-egg problem, so to speak. Thanks to our many years of experience, we know exactly what matters here—and what doesn’t.

Specifications: Legal and Practical Considerations

Of course, it’s important to protect your business or organization and avoid unexpected costs down the road. But flexibility in execution is just as important, because the situation is rarely completely clear at the start of a project. In many cases, developing a concept is precisely one of the key services provided by the agency or service provider. Furthermore, the contractor usually has a much better understanding of the possibilities offered by new IT approaches than the client—who may not even be aware of all the options available or the goals that can be achieved with them. Not to mention that “requirements specification” and “agile development” are two terms that are almost mutually exclusive.

This also aligns with our experience: The client comes to us with a task description and a requirements specification that already represents countless hours of work. We then hold a workshop, and it quickly becomes clear that we actually have to rewrite the requirements specification almost entirely from scratch. A great deal of effort was therefore wasted. That’s because we contribute ideas, highlight new solutions and possibilities, and recommend an approach that promotes synergy, efficiency, and future-proofing. This often leads to an “aha moment” for the client.

Our recommendation for writing specifications: Define general requirements

In our experience, it has proven effective to define general requirements and goals rather than writing detailed specifications. This has several advantages:

Potential partners can present creative solutions and make recommendations in their proposals that may convince you.
You pave the way for agile work.
You won’t spend many hours working on a document that will ultimately be obsolete.

An alternative is to start by booking a consulting workshop . This allows you to get a sense of current technologies and approaches early on, receive recommendations, and then decide how to proceed. For example, based on the consultation, you can create a requirements specification or a request for proposals that is flexible while still allowing for comparison of the proposals. Or you can use the results to explore entirely new avenues you hadn’t even considered before.