Writing A Functional Specification - The Screening Process (
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Once the components of the application are decided, the next step is to
detail the application workflow. In this stage, you would examine each and
every feature that has been decided upon, and come up with screen flow
diagrams or schematics that clearly delineate the important elements of the
interface, and the relationships between them.
Among the items that should be meditated upon here are:
* The screens required for each function
* The placement of screen elements
* Navigation between screens, and the various points of access of the
screens
* The data captured from the user at each screen, including data types,
validation rules and constraints; source and destination containers for the
data; and the data processing logic and business rules applicable at each
stage
The depiction of each of these functions can be aided with a prototype, if
the budget can support it; this prototype comes in handy to verify that your
assumptions and design decisions work in a real-world environment, and to
get real feedback from project managers and client representatives that
things are proceeding in the right direction. When asking for feedback, it
is important to always restrict the discussion to the core issues at hand,
in order to avoid the discussion digressing into issues of fonts and
branding rather than navigation and screen layout.
Another good idea, and one that I use often, is to include a top-level flow
chart showing the relationships between functions, modules and screens; the
data elements controlled by each; and the interfaces between each. This
provides readers and reviewers with a big-picture overview of how the
application is structured and gives them a reference point to go back to in
case they get lost, in much the same way as a site map on a Web site does.
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