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Subject:RE: techwr-l digest: August 01, 2001 From:Sean MacRae <sean -at- rcp -dot- co -dot- uk> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 3 Aug 2001 09:12:40 +0100
An excellent response to Bob's question.
The only thing I have to add is to check the audience for the "Technical
specification". Lisa assumes the document is for communication between
developers (I agree this is likely from the context).
It may be that the "tech spec." is prepared by developers for the customer,
e.g. to describe a proposed system.
We kind of categorise our specifications along these lines:
- to define and communicate the problem to be solved (in customer's
language)
- to communicate the proposed solution to the customer (in customer's
language)
- to communicate technical decisions between developers (and for posterity,
i.e. maintenance) (in tech-speak).
You may have problems when a developer is charged with writing documents in
the second category (unless you expect to use prototypes to communicate
proposed solutions).
There is a school of thought that you start off by defining the
requirements, then you write the manual for the software that meets those
requirements. Then the developer writes the software to match the manual...
[...]
> Start with what they're doing now, figure out what
> information they need
> that they don't have, create a document that helps them provide that
> information.
[...]
> If you looked through the archives, you discovered that a functional
> specification in one company is a technical spec in another is
> requirements in a third. Your best resource is your
> developers and what they've already done.
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