Software Requirements Specification Template: Fill & Download for Free

What are some good examples of a software requirements specification?The answer to this question is both that there is and is not any such thing. There are many situations in life and work where you can get a template. Often the new format is about 80% understandable, you can work out the other 20% as you go. This is not really the case with software requirements. The format is critically important, but so too is the process by which they are created.Software requirements sit in a tricky zone between business and technical thinking. They deal with a technical project that delivers business outcomes. Depending on who writes them they can fall too far toward one camp or the other. A technically written set of requirements may concentrate too much on implementation issues, say like the data design, and miss out on the actual benefits the business was after. Conversely, specifications written by non-technical people can be wordy, ambiguous, and repetitive. Believe me, I’ve read hundreds of them.The main job of a requirements document is to communicate what is needed by the business. This needs to be stated concisely and unambiguously, but it also needs to be readable. This immediately throws up a paradox. How can this dry, rigorous document not be so boring that the author gives up partway through, or the audience just glazes over when looking at it? There is an answer, dear reader, and I will reveal it, but first some more background.The requirements document can not simply be written by sitting down and bashing out a ream of detail based on a white-board session with the business and its user representatives. The process of creating a set of requirements itself contains a series of iterations where early concepts are developed, refined, refactored, simplified, and sometimes thrown out. Too often this part of the process is confined to that original briefing session.After an exhaustive search where I looked at many different examples and methodologies, it became obvious that describing the software’s functions as a set of stories with a defined type of user carrying out the actions was easily the most effective. I’m not talking about the ‘user story’ which is employed by agile teams to carry out development, but rather goal-based ‘user flows’ which can be used to discuss the functions of software that does not yet exist.It is likely that the development team you are gathering these requirements for will work in an agile way. Creating a monolithic ‘SRS’ document in one stage and throwing it over the wall to the dev team is not going to work. You really need a process that allows the decisions made during technical implementation be re-incorporated in a seamless way back into the model. This way the next development sprint can be based on the right information.If you recognise all these problems and crave the solution, I recommend you have a look at Primary. This is a system that provides the tools to create complete, unambiguous requirements that business users understand, and that technical users can build.

You can find several templates for SRS’s by googling “SRS template”. The IEEE has a good, free document on this subject, “IEEE Recommended Practice for Software Requirements Specifications” at http://www.cse.msu.edu/~cse870/IEEEXplore-SRS-template.pdf.Read that and check whether your company has already created such a template.

I manage projects at Nascenia Ltd, an outsourcing mobile app development company in Bangladesh and would be able to help you on mobile app development.We build app for both iOS and Android. Some of the reference mobile apps are DayTripFinder, Betting Expert, Smyril Line, Bhoganti.Before you hire an app developer, make sure you do the followingHave a clear idea of what you want to build. Document what you want and how you want it. You can use a software requirement specification template. There are plenty of templates available on the internet. I can provide one too. The template basically structures your requirement and help all the parties understand what you want.Decide your budget. Making estimation takes time. Sometimes clients contact us and tell us to give a quote. Quoting something need analysis. Analysis is time consuming. I discourage seeing something quickly and giving an price. Before you approach a developer, make sure you know how much you want to spend.Prepare initial sketches. If you have ideas of the whole system, put that on paper (or wireframes). Draw sketches of how the whole system will look. Draw workflow diagrams. The more visuals you can provide the better it is for the outsourcing partner to understand and work on you application.Plan, plan and plan. Former US president Abraham Lincoln once said "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe"This is true for outsourcing. Outsourcing is contractual. It is not encouraged to change task lists in a contract. Before you sign the contract, plan everything ahead and document it. From budget to development and marketing - you need to do your homework. If you do your research right, future changes will not need to shake up the entire system.I hope that helps. If you need more help on outsourcing, checkout my other answers.