Templates of Technical and Functional Specs [close

Question

So basically I am looking for good templates for writing both technical and functional specs on a project or work request.

What do you use? How deep do you get while writing the specs? Any additional general tips you could provide would be appreciated.

My company needs these badly. I work for a contractor and right now we do not use these documents at all.

EDIT: I have read Joel's take about Painless Specification, I really liked it, but are there any other opinions :)

Answer 1

Not a template, but Joel has written a couple of articles on writing a functional spec. He also has sample here.

Answer 2

If you want to purchase a book, Software Requirements by Karl Wiegers has templates for a few documents as an appendix. Unfortunately, I'm at work and that particular book is at home. If someone has it handy, they might be able to confirm that.

Answer 3

I happen to like this one, among others: ReadySet.

He sells a pro version too.

Answer 4

I would suggest to have a look at the Roberston's Volere template here. They are part of the Atlantic Systems Guild, together with people like Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister of "Peopleware" fame.

As the template is copyrighted, I will not reproduce it here, but give you some of the main headers:

1. The Purpose of the Project
2. The Stakeholders
3. Mandated Constraints
4. Naming Conventions and Terminology
5. Relevant Facts and Assumptions
6. The Scope of the Work
7. Business Data Model and Data Dictionary
8. The Scope of the Product
9. Functional Requirements
10. Look and Feels Requirements ...

There are many more, but this should give you an idea. The most interesting part of the template is the requirements shell that lists functional requirements on a kind of cue card. Again copyrighted, but truly valuable.

Look here in chapter 9.

Answer 5

You can buy templates from ieee and other places, but I have always ended up making my own.

For a technical spec, "Code Complete" by Steve McDonnell has a good checklist, you can draw some info from that. At my last job, I just made a template out of his section headers, and tweaked it from there.

As far as a functional spec, the important thing is to define all the interfaces:

1. UI (screen mockups)
2. Software interfaces (plugins, etc.)
3. Hardware interfaces (if appropriate)
4. Communications interfaces (Services, email, messaging, etc.)

There should also be a section for business rules, things that are important functionally that are not covered in any interface definition.

Answer 6

This is the best one I have found: http://www.jiludwig.com/templates/FRDTemplate.doc