Software Requirement Specifications for Web Applications

specifications requirements project-planning
illuminatedtiger picture illuminatedtiger · Apr 27, 2010 · Viewed 6.9k times · Source

I'm looking for some guidance/books to read when it comes to creating a software requirement specification for a web application. For inspiration I have read some spec documents for desktop based applications. The documents I have read capture a systems functional requirements in use cases which tend to be rather data oriented with use cases centered around the various CRUD operations the application is intended to perform.

I like this structure however I'm finding it rather difficult to marry it to what my web application needs to do, mostly reading data as opposed to manipulating it. I've had a go at writing some use cases however they all tend to boil down to "Search for item", "Change view of search results" or "User selects facet to refine search results". This doesn't sound quite right to me and makes me wonder if I'm going about this the right way.

Are there planning differences between web based and desktop based applications?

Answer

kizzx2 picture kizzx2 · Jun 9, 2010

In my experience, there is really nothing wrong as having all the specifications being CRUD. Most of the time, any application isn't just "a simple CRUD app." Requirements evolve and different parts of the systems tend to diverge and acquire some specific logic.

Even if it feels like repeating the same CRUD sentences over and over, actually writing them down and thinking about it (instead of copy & pasting) will often uncover hidden requirements.

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