Why am I still writing Product Specification Documents?

Marquisrs
6 min readDec 8, 2020

When I was learning to write the alphabet my grandfather gave me tasks to write the same letter over and over again till he decided it was legible. He used to grade every line of letters with a red pencil and correct my letters as if we were practicing for a calligraphy contest. I did not always enjoy these tedious tasks (though much love an attention was in them) and he used to recite to me that it does not matter that I can write if no one can read my writing.

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My grandfather’s advice comes to mind whenever I am writing a document (I hardly handwrite anything nowadays, but it applies to content as much as it did to the lettering of it). I keep this advice in mind when writing Spec documents (product specification documents). Especially as I discovered over time these documents have several purposes and audiences.

Working with several development teams over the years I found that most of them do not like reading documents. Short or long, if it were possible to transfer the knowledge in another way, it was preferable to them. After experimenting with other methods s.a. wireframes, screen mocks, tables, flow charts and even just a conversation about it, I found myself going back to the Spec documents. So what is so great about these documents? and who am I writing these for?

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