Writing the Specification

The Volere Requirements Specification Template and Volere Shell are convenient devices to use when writing a specification. The template is a guide to the topics to be covered by the specification, and the shell is a guide to what to write for each atomic requirement.

You should keep the business event list handy to allow for easy tagging of requirements to the business use case and/or product use case where the requirement originated. All requirements must have an identifier, so you must have some way of registering requirement numbers or otherwise guaranteeing that each requirement carries a unique identifier. Figure 10.5 illustrates this further.

Figure 10.5.

The specification is not so much written as assembled. The template provides a guide to the types of requirements, explaining how to describe each one. The components for each functional requirement and nonfunctional requirement are compiled using the shell as a guide. You can think of the requirements specification as an assembly of completed shells.

Now let us consider the remaining requirement types from the template and discuss the appropriate entries for each of the sections.