What are the key skills and competencies for writing and verifying functional specifications?

En principio es fundamental comprender las necesidades del cliente, que sería suficiente y que le aportaría un plus al requerimiento. Si bien generalmente, el cliente aporta información, lo ideal es ir más allá y documentarse aún más, por ejemplo, investigar si existen asuntos legales que cumplir, o si alguna herramienta de software soluciona mejor la necesidad, entre otros factores que se pueden investigar para agregar valor. Por último, armar un flujo de procesos y/o un mapa virtual de los sistemas que intervienen y como se comunican entre si, siempre hace que el tema se comprenda de manera más coherente.

The validation and verification of functional specifications are a must. -First, I include a prototype/ mockup within the Functional Spec so it's easy see how it will look. -Then, I review or give a walkthrough of the functional specifications with the business and developers. In this way, we are aligned, and the business will confirm by providing an approval. -Next, I work with the business to consider all the different business scenarios that need to be tested, ensuring we have a variety which will test different logic cases. -Testing is then performed to ensure what was developed meets the business requirements. -We discuss and resolve defects, and adjust the Functional Spec as needed.

La creatividad y visión de helicóptero. Muchas veces sucede que el cliente realiza un requerimiento, que en el fondo no es la mejor solución. En este sentido, reunirse y comentar al cliente las mejores alternativas, los beneficios, es relevante acompañar estas alternativas con números, para que se visualicen las mejoras que se están ofreciendo; por ejemplo en tiempo de ejecución, horas de trabajo, automatizaciones, etc.

Top frameworks and what my learning to this points are: 🔰 Ensure specifications are grounded in reality and align with both technical constraints and the end-user experience, all while focusing on delivering tangible business outcomes. 🔑The key is balancing tactical requirements with the final state vision. In my journey, I've found that using key frameworks can help immensely: 📍Agile Methodology – for iterative development and adaptability. 📍Traceability Matrix – to link specs back to business requirements and ensure alignment. 📍Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) – for visual clarity on workflows and processes. By leveraging these frameworks, the process becomes more structured, collaborative, and results-driven.

I agree having solid technical and domain knowledge helps better to write functional specifications. One of the reason for that is past experiences working with either in similar technology or domain provides you the picture of type of the issues you can solve or come across when writing functional specifications. In my mind I’m writing these specifications thinking what will be the end user experience or what the service-product bundle is eventually trying to solve and keeping that in mind one has to think of all the technical limitations while finding solution to the problem. Technical knowledge helps software developers and testing team to better equip when working on the application development and coming up with testing methodologies.