Make the Drupal way the default way

In a software development project it is very important to educate end-users early on about the existing features and limitations of the platform that will be used. Well managed expectations are critical to the success of a project. A lot of websites often implement very similar configuration stacks, so called patterns. Spezzle let's communities and companies build up collections of patterns that can be assembled into a site specification even by people with little technical background.

Embedding all aspects of a feature in a pattern

Using RDFa mark-up Spezzle embeds information about the implementation and documentation of patterns. This way, when an end-user pastes a pattern into her specification, the underlaying information is incorporated in the technical spec and documentation. Since we embed this data in the text it becomes possible to use only 1 paragraph or a snippet of text that describes a feature and still also copy over the underlaying metadata.

Improving the diaglogue between end-user and developer

A formalized functional specification (feature list) and technical specification (implementation remarks/module list) is important to reduce the scope creep in a project. Often however the information flow from functional specification to technical specification to implementation is a 1-way process, decisions that are made in the technical evaluation never make it back into the functional specification. This is often a cause of confusion, dissatisfaction and further scope creap. With Spezzle the functional and technical spec (and the documentation) become 1 document that shows different information depending on the view mode. This encourages developers to keep the different specifications updated.

Contribute a library of feature descriptions/use cases to the Open Source community

Spezzle is a pattern and specification repository that wants to make it as easy as possible to contribute configuration stacks to the community. The share or pay business model allows companiesto build non-public specifications for their customers and to invest in enhanced pattern collections that can become a competitive advantage in a specific market niche. More important however are the public patterns and specifications. Peer review will make these functionality patterns co-evolve with their technical specifications.