Specifications and requirements

Applications are defined by a set of specifications and requirements that are determined by stakeholders and captured in Designer Studio.

A specification represents a unit of processing that is performed by one or more actors for a given case type within an application. In other words, a specification defines what an application does. For example, specifications for an application that defines the on-boarding process for a new employee might include:

Collect employee information
Employee can select benefits
Hiring manager can assign assets to employee

One or more requirements define the criteria for the successful implementation of a specification. A requirement is an event, condition, or function that must be satisfied and tracked by an application. In the example of the on-boarding application, requirements for these specifications might include:

System requires less than three seconds for screen to screen interaction
Employees need the option to waive benefits
Managers cannot assign more than one of the same type of asset to an employee

Creating specifications and requirements is an iterative process performed by stakeholders throughout the development cycle of an application as part of the Direct Capture of Objectives. As a best practice, keep the specifications and requirements for an application up-to-date. Keeping this information current helps to manage the expectations of stakeholders, minimizes unnecessary work as goals change, and helps to reduce scope and feature creep.