Why Spending Time On Details Is Important?

When Product Managers ask their tech team to share estimates, they often turn out to be grossly inaccurate because the original spec or ticket misses one main aspect.

Granularity.

Let's take an example.

Product = Classified site.

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Spec:

As a seller, I want to post my item with a picture and a price to attract buyer interest.

The posting flow will have 3 steps:

• Basic details: item title, description and price
• Contact info: email and phone
• Photos

All fields are mandatory. After the final step, we need to show a confirmation on screen and send an email.

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If you give this to devs, they will have to fill in gaps with their "best judgment" & that's where things break down.

They will choose to pick their own answers to:

• What other validations are needed on the fields?
• What happens to the contact info step if the user is signed in?
• Limits on the number of photos? Do they need a cropping feature? Ability to select thumbnail?
• Do we have to save progress on each step?
• Is there a moderation step involved?

These often get specified during the live sprint with the expectation the initial estimate will remain the same. That's just not realistic.

So, if you want to save time on slippages later on, invest more time upfront on granularity.