software requirements

In my earlier posts I have written about why should software be documented and what should we document, and today I will write about software requirements. Requirements are written documents that describe system that should be developed and serve as communication tool between customers and developers. Requirements are also thinking tools that help you understand what you need to build so you don't waste money building the wrong thing.

"The very act of writing a specification forces you to think through the design you thought you had in your head, and helps you see the flaws in it quickly so that you can iterate and try more designs. Teams that use functional specifications have better designed products, because they had the opportunity to explore more possible solutions quickly. They also write code faster, because they have a clearer picture when they start of what’s going to be needed." [Joel on Software]

Approach to writing requirements

You can organize your requirements in more or less formal or agile fashion but the main point in requirements isn't the document templates and complex diagrams. The main point is information. I learned this from few starting chapters of Writing Effective Use Cases (Alistair Cockburn). I was expecting to find template for Use Cases that will help me write better documentation, and instead I found out that approach to writing documentation is more important than document template. (Read more...)