Writing the Site Specification

The site specification is a compilation of all the research and decisions that have been made in the envisioning and planning stages. It is the blueprint for how the implementation should proceed. The site specification does not have to be large or complex. It could be a bullet list of decisions in an e-mail message or a formal document that is routed for approval. The form and content are up to you. But it’s important to create some type of site specification at the end of the planning stage because it allows everyone involved in the process to review the decisions that have been made. It also provides a point of reference when questions arise during the actual implementation of the project. The site specification can take on greater importance in large deployments where multiple people and departments are involved.

A typical site specification includes these topics:

• Vision

• Goals

• Research

• Recommendations

• Site Topology

• Risks

• Schedule

• Summary

As part of the envisioning and planning stages, the Coho Winery team collected all of this information. Assembling it into a single document is easy, and the result is a comprehensive plan that the team can review and approve before moving forward.

Once the plan is approved, the team proceeds to the developing stage where the hardware, software, and content are integrated and streaming begins. We address those tasks in the next chapter.

In this chapter we followed the Coho Winery team through the planning stage of their streaming media implementation. The most time-consuming portion of this phase was conducting the research that would lead them to recommendations and decisions about their site. Once those recommendations and decisions were made, they were compiled, along with a topology and schedule, into a site specification that will be used as the blueprint for developing the site.

In the next chapter we build the system and stream the first video.