Functional specification

A functional specification (also, functional spec, specs, functional specifications document (FSD), functional requirements specification) in systems engineering and software development is a document that specifies the functions that a system or component must perform (often part of a requirements specification) (ISO/IEC/IEEE 24765-2010).

The documentation typically describes what is needed by the system user as well as requested properties of inputs and outputs (e.g. of the software system). A functional specification is the more technical response to a matching requirements document, e.g. the Product Requirement Document "PRD". Thus it picks up the results of the requirements analysis stage. On more complex systems multiple levels of functional specifications will typically nest to each other, e.g. on the system level, on the module level and on the level of technical details.

A functional specification does not define the inner workings of the proposed system; it does not include the specification of how the system function will be implemented. Instead, it focuses on what various outside agents (people using the program, computer peripherals, or other computers, for example) might "observe" when interacting with the system.

A functional requirement in a functional specification might state as follows:

Such a requirement describes an interaction between an external agent (the user) and the software system. When the user provides input to the system by clicking the OK button, the program responds (or should respond) by closing the dialog window containing the OK button.

There are many purposes for functional specifications. One of the primary purposes on team projects is to achieve some form of team consensus on what the program is to achieve before making the more time-consuming effort of writing source code and test cases, followed by a period of debugging. Typically, such consensus is reached after one or more reviews by the stakeholders on the project at hand after having negotiated a cost-effective way to achieve the requirements the software needs to fulfill.

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