Re: Specifications

["E. Gail Miedema" <egail -at- TELEPORT -dot- COM>]

See the document template at

http://www.ics.hawaii.edu/%7Ejohnson/413/lectures/5.2.html

I have modified it to better meet the needs of our system, but I found it
a *very* useful design/development tool. That is, during the process of
filling in the blanks (no matter how redundant they seemed), there were
many issues and problems defined that may not have been encountered (and
resolved) as early on as they were. The process of writing the document,
the collaborative effort among marketing requirements people, engineers,
and tech writers, identified many areas that needed further analysis,
areas that were critical to the project.


I also suggest the following books as good references regarding the
requirements definition process:

Gause, Donald C. and Weinberg, Gerald M. __Exploring Requirements: Quality
Before Design__. New York: Dorset House, 1989.

Davis, Alan M. __Software Requirements: Objects, Functions, and States__.
New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1993.

Grady, Jeffrey O. __System Requirements Analysis__. New York: McGraw-Hill,
1993.

Each (especally the latter two) contains decent sections on documentation.


You may also try

http://www.deakin.edu.au/~malcolmc/scc205/topic1.html

Although this last page I haven't had the opportunity to read carefully,
so I can't really recommend it.


Finally, another source of references is at

http://mijuno.larc.nasa.gov/dfc/biblio/reqengBiblio.htm


Good luck!
--Gail


On Tue, 18 Nov 1997, Robyn Hume wrote:

> Our tech writing department is making yet another effort to get the
> programmers and engineers at our manufacturing company to write
> Requirements and Specifications documents. We have a new project in the
> works with a partner in Austrailia ( We are in Canada). Two developers
> are working in two continents and no one is using any written
> requirements or specifications.
> I have given them some samples of software and hardware specs and want
> to develop a template for the company to follow.
> I am having trouble accessing the techwr archives and so my questions
> are:
>
> 1. Would anyone care to share some favorite software/hardware spec
> contents and samples, Functional or otherwise .
> 2. Does anyone have any suggestions as to dealing with stubborn project
> leaders who don't seem to think these are important . I have tried the
> "legal liability" argument and  the "we need them to write the manual"
> argument but to little avail.
>
> Posts: mailto:techwr-l -at- listserv -dot- okstate -dot- edu
> Commands: mailto:listserv -at- listserv -dot- okstate -dot- edu (e.g. SIGNOFF TECHWR-L)
> Archives: http://listserv.okstate.edu/archives/techwr-l.html,
> Subjects: JOB:, QUESTION:, SUMMARY:, ANNOUNCE:, or none of these.
>
>

Posts: mailto:techwr-l -at- listserv -dot- okstate -dot- edu
Commands: mailto:listserv -at- listserv -dot- okstate -dot- edu (e.g. SIGNOFF TECHWR-L)
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