Absence of standard specifications and requirements might make development teams feel hopelessly irrepressible and sweep through the SDLC like a whirlwind. Another way around, having a well-structured app requirements document is an absolute delight that engrosses various stages of SDLC. All the requirements – functional and non-functional, scope, the sequence of operations to be followed in the process, any requirements provided by the company, any requirements given by clients, or aspects of business requirements, help ensure the effective cooperation between the specialists involved in the product delivery. It might happen sometimes that any project may have no or minimal specifications. But that does not do away with the need to have software testing.
What’s The Need to Have a Specification Document?
What is the need to write the requirements for a software project? Let’s imagine there is a need to produce a mobile app, but people (developers) lack programming skills. So a business finds out a developer and describes their idea to him. But when he showcases the app for the first time, it turns out to be a blind-fold, not exactly what you want. An ‘oops’ in this case would be better than a ‘what-if’. Why did this happen? Because of the lack of details while describing the idea! How easy the ratio of probability or real analysis turn out in this case? p(a,b) = p(a|b)p(b) = p(b|a)p(a)?
Scope document precedes software requirement specification, which turns out to be a rigorous assessment of requirements before the more specific system design stages. It’s goal is to reduce re-design at a later stage of SDLC. It is deemed to provide a realistic basis for estimating product costs, risks and schedules.
Steps Involved in Defining the Requirements before Mobile App Development
Please note: The steps discussed here are illustrative and the actual process might deviate to some extent according to the organizational process and specific app requirements.
- Checking the necessity to create a mobile application (involves understanding the main purpose of creating a mobile application)
- Structuring the idea of mobile application (the sequence of screens, aligning various features, privacy policies, terms, and conditions, captcha, forgot password, etc.)
- Aligning the steps in sequence
- Referring to existing applications
- Identify the features according to priority (Primary and secondary features)
- It must illustrate only the relevant details (that solves the functional aspect of the problem, details can be skipped)
- Functional, non-functional, business – requirements must be specified
- User stories/use cases – It is the interaction between the created product and the end-users
- Create Sketches and Wireframes
- Make use of mixed formats
Definitional
While SRS describes the peculiarities of the developed system, all requirements of product functionality are specified in Functional Requirement Specification (FRS) and the business requirements are defined in Business Requirement Specification (BRS). Clear requirements are always helpful in creating the right products for the development teams. And a software requirements specification (SRS) helps you lay the groundwork for product development.
A app requirement (functional/non-functional) or a scope document is worthy only if it is able to specify the functionality of the software like what is this software supposed to do and how is it expected to perform, external interfaces like how hardware will interact with software or any assumptions on software entities etc., required performance levels like response rate, recovery rate etc. of the software, quality attributes like security, safety, portability etc. and design constraints like operating system limitations, language of implementation etc. Specifically, it acts as a product specification document that acts as a basis of enterprise mobile applications, giving an outline of business logic and technical details, acting as a guide for the development team and interface to clients.
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