(^34) 97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know
Requirement Specifications: An Oxymoron
Alan Greenblatt
Sudbury, Massachusetts, U.S.
gooD REqUIREMEnTS (R) describe how features of a product are going to
solve particular existing or potential problems. Good features (F), sometimes
called functionality, are added to products to address those important prob-
lems. Requirements are captured by salespeople or created by software project
managers:
• We can’t sell the product outside of the United States (R). We need to pro-
vide internationalization and location support (F).
• Users have to click five buttons to complete a very simple task. They get
frustrated and never complete the task. We need to simplify the user inter-
face (R) and reduce the number of button clicks to two or fewer to complete
the same tasks (F).Specifications (S), on the other hand, describe exactly how problems will be
solved and the requirements will be met. Using the examples above, the fol-
lowing specifications might be written by systems architects:
• We will extract all text strings, including pop-up messages, and place
them in external resource bundles (S).
• The application will be enhanced so that all text displayed on the screen
will be retrieved from these resource bundles (S).
• Localization can be performed by creating specific resource bundles for
the locales required (S).
• The functionality achieved through clicking buttons 1, 2, and 3 will be
bundled into a single button click on Button A (S).
• The functionality of existing buttons 4 and 5 will be bundled into Button
B (S).