How Functional and Non-Functional Requirements Impact Software Development
To successfully develop a mobile app you should define what the functional and non-functional requirements are before the team starts work.
This helps the project run more smoothly, reducing both costs and time to market and includes things like establishing how you will determine success, what acceptable performance is and issues like updates, availability and on-going management.
Setting goals and requirements make the difference between a successful and unsuccessful project; poor clarity at the planning stage can increase the timeline and budget by a massive 60%. It is clear how importing setting these requirements are.
Ways to Ensure a Clear Set of Goals and Requirements in the Mobile App Development Process:
- Clarify the terms used and the roles in the team to avoid misunderstandings
- Closely cooperating to reduce communication time speeds the project and keep budget on track
- Providing detailed requirements to ensure development time and cost estimates are accurate
- Planning for mistakes — visualization of the project can help pick up problems early in development, reducing impacts on development time and maintaining budgetary targets
- Increase predictability — make sure the project can fulfill your needs
So, moving forward, we can highlight some of the requirements types a company needs to look at and clarify for the development team. A statement of goals, needs and objectives are essential for the developer to be able to produce a workable solution to your needs and stakeholder needs should also be established.
Highlighting Functional and Non-functional Needs
Functional needs impact the way that the product works; nonfunctional needs look at its general characteristics.
Functional requirements must be laid out precisely and include items such as business rules, audit, interface, certification, reporting, administration which are submitted in detailed written form. This also includes specification information, use case scenarios, the purpose of the app and how the product is envisioned to meet the needs of the company. Finally, there should be a precise list of items such as database needs.
Prototype Development
Prototypes can help give a concrete vision of a product, highlight any issues and challenges in development and show how users can interact with the app. There are 2 main types of prototype used in development: The cheaper, disposable prototype which gives a quick idea of how the product works; or the Evolutionary prototypes which go on to form the earliest version of the product.
Non-functional Requirements
These details how the product interacts with the user, its ease of use and how it achieves the set goals. It will take account of usability, legal requirements and regulations, how reliable the product is and performance. Additionally, it should look at the following:
- Ease of use — key for good user uptake
- Compliance with regulations– legal frameworks and local regulation adherence
- Reliability — code safety and compliance to ensure reliable use
- Performance — any gaps that may cause a decrease in performance for users
- Integration — are there any conflicts?
- Subjectivity — how different elements may be interpreted by different users
Everyone must be clear what the non-functional requirements are so they must be defined properly. Using distinct classification groups will improve understanding, increase productivity and ensure that the completed project works well and is fit for purpose.
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