ICT Functional Specifications

Writing good, useful functional specifications can be difficult for a variety of reasons:

Requires a set of diverse skills - not only does the person need to have the ability to breakdown the solution into a set of functions, they must also understand the capabilities of the technologies being proposed, plus have good authoring and communication skills.
Time and effort is required to write a good functional specification and often the pressure is on to start the development before the specification is complete.
Can be seen as an excuse to discuss the requirements again because this can delay progress even more.

So are functional specifications worth the time and the effort involved and do they really add value to the development process or does it just delay the development team and curb their natural creativity?

The answer isn't a straight yes or no - a lot depends on the type of industry involved, the culture of the organisation (process or product oriented), the development practices adopted within the organisation, and the purpose: is it for internal development or external quoting?

Oakleigh have experience in writing functional specifications for their clients and making their substance and presentation appropriate to the client's needs.

Oakleigh have produced a varied style of functional specifications ranging from detailed functional specifications used by organisations to gain quotes from external companies to the use of story writing (1 page descriptions of a functional feature) for internal projects.

How can Oakleigh help?

We are experienced in a variety of different styles of writing functional specifications.
Management of the functional specification process as part of the wider project and programme management function.
Act as reviewers of functional specifications generated.
Expertise in formal functional specification writing across to the more informal story writing used in agile development methods.
Consultants who have significant business and IT experience and hence can bridge the gap between the requirements and the development whilst offering an independent view.

How we have helped our clients

Use of stories for the development of an in-house system within the utility sector.
Defining the scope and functionality required by a Scottish University for its proposed new student management information system.
Definition of the technical and functional specifications required by an English university for its proposed new CRM system.
Worked with a leading UK university to review their functional specifications for proposed new student information system.

"An independent, honest, external view is essential to any organisation seeking to respond to the changing business environment and achieve its mission to deliver the best possible service. Oakleigh consulting have these attributes and made a significant contribution in assisting us to attain our on-going developmental goals."

Chief Executive, UK Research Establishment