[thelist] Writing a functional spec

[Martin]

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Madhu Menon wrote on 30/4/01 4:00 pm

>Can any of you nice folks give me pointers to articles, templates, etc.
>about writing a decent functional spec for web projects/ web applications? 

A useful methodology (particularly where your developers are
using OOP) is UML.

Info here:
http://www.platinum.com/corp/uml/uml.htm

Essentially, you need to document all the use cases - each function -
with 
*) Who's involved (people and systems)
*) Inputs
*) Outputs
*) The process steps in between (process flows are useful)

Don't bother with *how* the process is done - that's for the
developers/architects to define.

If your process has more than maybe 10 steps, then think
about breaking it down into multiple use cases.

Similarly, if your level of detail is above keystroke level,
break each sub-process step down. Iterate until you hit
bottom (or until your development people QA your docs
to say that they can take it away and code it).

Remember that requirement docs are the start of a dialogue
with your developers...

There's a UML template in Visio if you have it.

Cheers
Martin

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