In overall Software Development Life-Cycle (SDLC) there are multiple documents to be created and maintained. In this article, we are going to discuss three very important documents. And they are as following,
- Business Requirement Document (BRD)
- Software Requirement Specification (SRS) or Document (SRD) and
- Functional Requirement Specification (FRS) or Document (FRD)
What is a BRD?
This document captures the Voice of Business (VOB). It is like a 100 feet overview of high level business requirement. In Lean Six Sigma Project terminology, it is also called as Project case or Business case. It is created by a Business Analyst (BA). BRD's audiences are Project Sponsor, higher & middle management level People like VP, AVP, GM and Managers.
BRD can be created by answering to the following questions:
- Why we are doing this project?
- What are the business requirements? and
- What are the high level impacts and business results, the project is going to give?
For an example, in case of a new ERP system project for a manufacturing firm in India, the BRD is created after taking into consideration the voice of business by following way-
- 50% reduction in operation time of users.
- More efficient and productive system of business operations.
- Accuracy of business and transnational process increase by 20%.
- Less Paper work.
- More collaboration between teams and functions.
What is a SRS/SRD?
It is like a 50 feet overview of high level functional and non-functional requirement. It is created by a Business Analyst (BA). In this document the high level BRD is further break-downed into main modules, sub-modules and features. It also having estimation of cost and effort required to complete the project.
SRS's audiences are Project Manager, Subject Matter Expert (SME), Technical and Implementation Leads.
For an example, in case of a new ERP system project for a manufacturing firm in India, the SRS is created by following way:
- Material Management Module
- Sales Module with Central/National and State level Goods Service Tax Feature (as applicable to India)
- Procurement Module with Supplier Sub-Module and Price Comparison feature.
- Logistics and Supply Chain Module with Export and Import Sub-Module, Taxes feature.
- Quality Module and
- Finance Module
What is a FRS/FRD?
This document captures the Voice of User and is external or end user perspective. It is created by a Business System Analyst (BSA). In this document showing how a system will behave when an end user interacts with it, to satisfy the requirements mentioned in BRD and SRD.
FRS's audiences are Project Manager, and end users and it is reviewed by Project Manager.
For an example, in case of a new ERP system project for a manufacturing firm in India, the FRS is created after taking into consideration the voice of User by following way:
Material Management user -Material Procurement Manager/Engineer can create, edit new material, can assign tax code to material.
Sales User- Sales Engineer can create, edit and revise Request for Quotation (RFQ)/Request for Proposal (RFP), can retrieve reports of RFQ/RFP received from end customer over a period of time.
Procurement User- Purchase Engineer/Buyer can send RFQ/RFP to multiple Vendors/Suppliers, can generate reports based on Supplier's responses about pricing.
Logistics and Supply Chain User- Logistics and Shipping Engineer can create various export or import documents and can generate shipping documents and reports.
Quality User-Quality Engineer can record defects, rejection and reworks and generate various quality reports like Cost of Poor Quality (CoPQ) and number of parts rejected and means/modes of rejection or failure.
Finance User- Account person can do invoicing/billing to end Customer and do payments to Suppliers and also can generate reports of payments received and payments given.
If BRDs, SRDs and FRDs are good and precise then final software application is also take a good shape as all levels requirements are well captured. These are the live documents and need to be updated regularly, when there is any change happens. Overall good quality of these documents helps for a better quality of product whether may be Software, IoT application or any Manufacturing Execution System (MES).
Mahendra Gaikwad
Lean-Agile Thinker, Servant-Leader
