Again on Functional Specifications

Then there is the issue of incomplete functional specifications. The functional specification sometimes does not cover many items which the author may have taken for granted. However, this may be required for development and test teams to come up with their downstream design and planning. For enhancement projects, many a times, the author of FS documents, do not start a document from scratch. Various FS documents are available in the organizational repository. Documents with similar functionality forms the base of a new FS. In doing so, the author unknowingly misses out to remove old references and sections in the document. Also sometimes, key areas that are supposed to be covered in the FS are left out by mistake. All these come into light during the review process. However, donkey’s hours are spent by the guys reviewing these FS to figure out what is correct and what isn’t.