3. The Requirements Specification
The person responsible for developing this document is the business or systems analyst.
In a large project the analyst may also have a number of people working for them. These extra staff would carry out the interviews, questionnaires and observations needed to develop the overall specification.
An agreement between two groups is often called a 'contract'. In this case the contract is between the development team, headed up by the project manager and the client / customer.
The requirements specification is carefully laid out to highlight the following
| Scope of the system | This provides a context for the system within the organisation. For instance the scope will often define what it will *not* do as well as a general explanation of what it will do. |
| Objectives | These are usually laid out point by point so it is very clear what the system needs to do. Bullet points or tables can be used to lay these out |
| Timing | This section provides a timeline of how the project will proceed and when it is to finish. Typically a Gantt chart can be used to show milestones |
| Constraints | The budget and manpower that is available for the project |
| Inputs | This section defines what inputs are needed by the system. It will provide outline details of the data capture forms, input screens, automated system feeds and so on. It does not try to be very technical at this point. Just an overall idea of what will be going into the system and how this is to be achieved. |
| Outputs | Systems have to produce an output in one form or another. This section will describe the expected form of outputs. For example, printed reports and graphs, output viewing screens, files created and stored, any output data feeds to other systems and so on. |
| Processing requirements | Between Input and Output there needs to be some processing going on. This part of the Requirement Specification describes the processing to be carried out. Processing details include: - Procedures to be used - Important validation details - The acceptable limits of processing times |
| Contract | The requirements specification is in effect a contract between the end user and the people responsible for delivering the project |
challenge see if you can find out one extra fact on this topic that we haven't already told you
Click on this link: Requirements Specification