RE: Kovitz vs Traditional functional/design specs?

[Christina R-Shull <Christina -dot- R -at- ttimail -dot- com>]

HI,

I am a Technical Writer that is now performing Quality Assurance Engineering
for my company. I have a QA background and am experienced with helping
developers create and document their processes. From a development point of
view and from a quality assurance point of view:

1) The functional specification describes what the system will do with no
reference to implementation (how it does the job).

2) Design specification is the how the system does the job.

If you do the design before you know the functional requirements, how do you
ensure that you are designing the correct system for the end customer?

Doing design before you have a clear understanding of at least some of the
functional requirements is a sign of a 'broken' development process. Below,
Geoff states -

> How you define the two specifications, and what labels you use, are purely
> irrelevant
> outside the academic discourse community; that's splitting  linguistic
> hairs. 
> What's truly important is that everyone involved in the
> process understands and agrees upon the meaning of the labels, and that
> someone is responsible for ensuring that this understanding and agreement
> happens.
> 
You need to do more than agree upon the labels, you need to make sure you
have the right process in place first!

Thank you,

Christina