Developing a Software Application, Essay Example

When developing a software application it is vital that the analysis of business requirements is both accurate and reliable.  The following issues are likely problems that may be encountered:-

Error of omission –  The specifications are incomplete and are missing one or more vital components of information;

Specification error –  The specifications provided are either incorrect or inaccurate in some way. The specifications are inaccurate and not described in correct terms

Error of interpretation – The analyst has not correctly interpreted the user or business requirement specification (gatherspace.com, 2011)

A good functional requirements specification will examine the requirements from a number of different perspectives.  These perspectives should be logical and relatively congruent.  For example business process charts, data flow diagrams, data models, context diagrams, workflow diagrams etc.  By careful examination of the different models the analyst should be in a position to see any errors of omission, inaccurate specifications that highlight significant differences between the models and any errors of interpretation between the user and the analyst.  (Ofni Systems, 2011)

With errors of omission you may want to look at the business process charts and see if these have a logical flow from start to finish and that the necessary outcomes are achieved.  These may be compared to high level context diagrams of the system for alignments in blocks of functionality.  Data Flow Diagram (DFD’s) are useful to compare against the data models and help in looking at consistency in the flow of information in the system.  Functional Requirements Specifications within the structured systems development process provide good rigorous templates to assist in the avoidance of errors (Vie, D.L. 2011)

References

gatherspace.com. (2011, 11 9). Software Requirement Specifications. Retrieved from gatherspace.com: http://www.gatherspace.com/static/software_requirement_specification.html

Ofni Systems. (2011, 11 9). Functional Requirements Specifications. Retrieved from Ofni Systems: http://www.ofnisystems.com/Validation/Functional_Requirements.htm

Vie, D. L. (2011, 11 9). Writing Software Requirements Specifications. Retrieved from Techwhirl: http://techwhirl.com/articles/writingsoftwarerequirementsspecs/