If you find yourself in a business analyst role on an IT project, it is likely that at some point you will need to create a functional specification – and these can take many different forms depending on the methodologies in place at your organization. But what is a functional specification? Why do you create a functional specification? And, perhaps more importantly, what goes into a document like this?

The purpose of a functional specification is to define the requirements to be implemented by the software solution.

Now, as business analysts, not all aspects of our solutions are software-based. A perfectly legitimate solution to a business problem could involve a business process change, organizational change, or even a configuration adjustment.
But since so much of business today is supported directly by IT systems, many times solving a problem means upgrading or building new software…and that means specifying functional requirements.

Functional Specifications, Without It, IT Does Not Exist

The beginning starts here. This is where business and IT find functional spec is the moment of true alignment that matters have a natural synopsis, more technical documents such as technical design specifications are often primarily reviewed by BAs, QAs, SMEs and other technical people. Focused on how things worked and what kept them in place
It was only a few years back where I began to write documents that were large in content and richer in functionality. This included information about the project itself but the various steps which led up to the point where I was at. This was Program Specifications, Business Requirements, System Requirements, environmental assumptions, and life throughout the very existence of the document itself. This was easily 65 or more pages cumulatively.