Getting specs right - Introduction to #dospecsdifferently

In this mini-series, #dospecsdifferently, we want to delve into getting your specs right. Everything we're doing in our #dofixdifferently series is all about trying to make your firm more automated, smarter and get customers onboard faster.

Getting your specs right is a really key part of that. One of the things people always ask is, why did we call the company FixSpec, and they assume it's because of FIX the protocol. And well, of course, that helps with Google, but it's also a play on the very, "to fix". We want to improve the way people manage specifications, which is one of the key ingredients that goes into a faster, more automated onboarding process.

The aim of the series is to leave you with there key goals:

If you do your specs correctly then customers should be able to connect to you faster. Faster with fewer errors, which is really important from a revenue perspective. Customers are live and trading faster, so revenue is coming through the door faster.

The second thing is, you shouldn't be wasting your time re-answering the same questions over and over again. The reality is, if you fix your documentation once, then it becomes documentation that people actually want to use to code to your API.

Thirdly it's about not being embarrassed by your spec. It's the first document that your customer receives from you, and it's not really good enough that people hand their spec over and say, well you know it's kind of roughly ok, but the last time we updated it was about 12 years ago, and we know some bits that are not quite right.

Getting your spec right at the beginning gives it more authority and makes it much more useful for your firm and your customers.