Have you ever started coding a new Web service without a clear plan?

I know I have. It’s not uncommon for developers to assemble a team and jump right into building functionality for a new Web service. However, I’ve learned that this approach often overlooks essential foundational steps that are critical to a project’s success. Neglecting these early stages can lead to complications down the road, making the development process more difficult than it needs to be. In this guide, I’d like to share the steps I’ve found to be necessary before jumping into coding for Web services projects. My goal is to provide a roadmap that will help you plan effectively from the ground up, ensuring a solid understanding of both the technical and project management aspects necessary for success.

Detailed feature specification

Start by fully defining the features you want to implement. This method ensures that all team members understand the feature’s purpose and requirements, and sets realistic and measurable development milestones that align with project goals. Even if you make changes later, having a solid design for your development helps you stay on track.

Create API specifications for front-end and back-end communication

Before using tools like Swagger or Postman to visualize and test API endpoints, start by organizing and documenting your API specifications in a shared tool like Notion. This step ensures that front-end and back-end team members have a clear idea of what information they need to share with each other before development begins, and ensures that all necessary details are discussed and agreed upon before formalizing them in Swagger. This approach reduces misunderstandings and allows both sides of the development team to work independently, yet cohesively.

Establish a consistent convention across GitHub

It’s important to establish a consistent coding and documentation convention within your team. Use GitHub to create guidelines that include specific naming conventions for branches, commit message formats, coding standards, and pull request processes. This will not only improve the readability and maintainability of your code, but it will also streamline the process of collaboration between different contributors to the project.

In future posts, I will delve deeper into each of these steps, providing detailed insights and practical tips on how to implement them effectively. The goal of this series is to provide you with the knowledge and tools you need to manage your Web services development projects from conception to completion, ensuring a smooth and successful execution.