Status: LIVE

Project Maturity Stages

A project starts as an idea (e.g. “A dating app that focuses on long term relationships, not hookups”), and goes through an incremental process of refinement, until it is a market-ready product. It’s valuable to standardise upon shared vocabulary with regard to these milestones. At 9Y we talk about the following. (In blue you will find the intended estimation range between best and worst case)

Initial Concept Stage (+- 16x)

• Idea

  • one to two sentences.

• Executive summary

  • ~ half an A4 page of content explaining the product

  • Usually made by the client, to help them explain their project

• CRD (Customer Requirements Document)

  • More detailed explanation of the product

  • Might include a rough list of features, and a rough list of priorities

  • Which platforms

  • Rough timeline

Product Definition Stage (+- 4x)

• PRD (Product Requirements Document). Now we’re starting to get to a level of detail where we can make meaningful estimates.

  • User stories

  • Sketches

  • External dependencies identified

  • Priorities for the scope (must-haves vs nice-to-haves).

Detailed Requirements Stage (+- 2x)

• UX Design.

  • In addition to the CRD and PRD

  • All screens of the product as sketches/mocks

  • Almost all user journeys are well defined

  • Click-Dummy

User Interface Stage (+- 1.2x-1.6x)

• UI design.

  • Pixel perfect designs, that we can go ahead and implement

    • Final XD/Figma file

  • Some important details might be missing

Full Specification Stage (+- 1.2x)

• Full specification

  • PRD

  • UI/UX

  • External dependency specifications (API, …)

  • Maybe edge case specification

  • Error handling

  • …

• Reference implementation

  • Product already exists.

    • E.g. building a web-version of an existing mobile app

Final Product Stage (+- 1x)

• Final product. It’s deployed in the wild and users are using it.