How do I write a proposal document for a software project?

Question

I have to write a proposal document for my homework. It's about creating an offline message plugin for Liferay. I'm really confused about writing such a document. How should I write this? Is there an example proposal document available somewhere?

(I'm afraid this question is "not programming related". Where could I ask it instead?)

Answer 1

There are many online resources and banks of "Standard" formats for these types of documents. Here is one site in particular that you might reference.

The biggest thing is that there are many ways to write them, and depending on the type of application, the programming language, the client audience and more, you will write things differently.

Answer 2

I think you should point business opportunities in this document. So scope rather on business and what pains for decision makers your solution is going to solve, rather than writing about technical details.

Answer 3

Try browsing through here to get an idea of what other people's templates look like.

Note that "how do I do something well?" is always a very challenging question to answer in a StackOverflow question, mostly because it's too broad to answer in a precise manner. That said, there are a few good resources that you can look at to get a feel for what other people are doing, like the above site. (Also, note that just because a lot of people are doing something in a particular way doesn't make it a good idea.)

For a more concrete professional reference, try this book out: "IT Project Proposals: Writing to Win".

Answer 4

have a look at a commercial "Process". I'm IBM so I'll point you at Rational Unified Process White Paper here. You will see mention of a Vison document. This might be a starting point.

Consider what a business person is likely to need to know. Things such as what would be delviered, why the business needs it, benefits etc. And costs in terms of time, effort and money.

Answer 5

I learned as a technical writer to:

• Write for a specific target audience (e.g. CEOs, or IT people, or end-users, or developers)

• Include all/only the information which that specific audience needs to do whatever it is that specific audience does (e.g. decide whether there's a business need for it, or decide whether it's easy to install and support, or decide whether it's easy to use, or learn how to customize it).

• Start with a table of contents, to define what topics shouldn't be included (and which topics shouldn't be included and which should instead be links to other documents)

Therefore I find difficult to answer your question: because you haven't said who you'd be writing the proposal for, and because I don't know why these people would be reading your proposal (i.e. what are these people trying to do, and why).

Remember that people are probably trying to solve some problem they have, so it helps if you understand what their problem is.

Answer 6

what kind of proposal do you mean?

is this like a business case or a business plan?

or do you mean a quote/tender you would give a client, with a project budget and list of deliverables?

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if you mean a quote or tender, then i can point you to two articles:

• Writing Short, Easy to Read Fee Proposals
• Writing Fee Proposals (a bit older, but still good)

--LM