20+ SAMPLE Technical Specification

What Is a Technical Specification?

A technical specification is a business document that outlines and describes the necessities of a specific product, project, or system containing technical information about the design, development, and operation relating to requirements. The document provides all the necessary information to developers and multiple stakeholders regarding business requirements, best practices, and internal practices that an organization adheres to when developing a particular product, system, or project. It is the responsibility of the technical team lead, project lead, or senior engineers to design and draft the technical specification document that aims to define the solution to the technical problem. A technical specification document sketches how an individual or a team plans to address any arising technical issue through scheming and planning to find a viable solution. Technical specifications are also known as software design, engineering, and technical design documents. These documents serve as a blueprint for a product, project, or system, stipulating designs, methodology, processes, workflows, and technical tests about a product, including its necessity to the market. It details all the necessary information that the client and the development team must know to understand every project aspect and the various stages of product, system, or project development.

According to the Requirements Management Report of the Purchasing Manager’s Index (PMI) about competency and project management success, approximately 47 percent of all unsuccessful projects from companies are failures in achieving their goals due to poor management requirements.

Components of a Technical Specification

A technical specification is a document beneficial to engineers and developers when developing or creating a product or a project. There is an extensive list of requirements and problems that companies aim to solve, with every organization unique in producing exclusive work cultures with their employees. Each presented solution from a company is according to the standards the organization sets within teams and departments. As such, each technical specification is unique on its own. Read the section below for the components of a technical specification document.

Front page: The front page of the technical specification contains information about the title, author or authors, document reviewer or reviewers, and team members’ names. The front page or cover page must also bear details about significant dates, including its creation and when the last update to the specification document happened. The document also contains a ticket, task tracker, or issue reference link that enables individuals to find the report easily using archives and databases.Introduction: The introduction section of the technical specification includes an overview or summary that outlines the technical problem from the user’s perspective, the context, stakeholders, and possible solutions. It also contains a glossary detailing new and technical terms appearing in the research document or those that the researcher thinks are unfamiliar to readers and stakeholders. The introduction also provides background and context about the problem, including the problem’s source, why it is worth solving, previous efforts for solutions, its effect on company accomplishments and its users, its connection to product strategy and technical scheme, and its relation to objectives. The introduction also states the product’s technical goals, out-of-scope or non-goals, future objectives, and assumptions.Solutions: The technical specification document provides solutions for users and stakeholders. It must contain the present or existing solutions with their pros, cons, and format. The section also consists of the proposed solution, including its pros, cons, dependencies, external factors, schema or data model changes, and business logic. The solutions section must also present a test strategy with a clear description of how the test accomplishes requirements, quality assurance, and integrations and unit tests. There must also be a monitoring and altering plan with information about administering, alerting, and logging plans and tools, as well as measurement metrics. The roll-out and deployment plan details the architecture, environments, communication methods, and phased roll-out plan. There must also be a rollback strategy and alternative designs or solutions for the most effective and efficient solution.Additional considerations: This section of the technical specification identifies the effect of the proposed solution on another team, considerations about third-party platforms and services, cost analysis, security concerns, privacy considerations, regional and accessibility concerns, risks, and operational and support considerations.Success assessment: In the success assessment section of the technical specification section, the researchers include the security, cost, and performance impact on the organization. It also contains performance metrics for a proposed solution, including tools that capture and measure metrics and a list of key performance metrics that the process needs to capture.Work: The technical specification document contains a work section detailing work estimates and timelines the group works with to provide a solution to user problems. It also lists priorities by categorizing tasks according to impact and urgency. The section also contains milestones wherein containing metrics to gauge performance milestones and uses dated checkpoints to classify major task groups in accomplishments.Deliberation: The deliberation section contains discussions about the elements of the proposed solution that team members still need to process, which requires more time for business meetings and planning to have finality and agreement. It is also in this section where members indicate open-ended questions about the whole process.End matter: The final section of the technical specification is the end matter that discusses related work, links to online references or documents, and acknowledgments that list the names of individuals who worked and provided effort to contribute to the measures, contents, and design of a product.

How To Develop and Construct a Technical Specification

Technical specification documents allow tech engineers to provide and think about challenging technical problems happening during a project or product development. Writing one is a tedious and frustrating process with instances that persons will do away with not creating the document entirely. Crafting a technical specification increases the probability of having a successful project, service, or product feature that can satisfy the demands and requirements of stakeholders. It also lessens the chances of adverse events or scenarios happening during the process, implementation, and even after the launch of a project, service, or product.

1. Ask Preliminary Questions About a Project, Service, or Feature

When constructing a technical specification, engineers must establish how an application works or behaves by answering significant questions related to how the app works, the possible problems and pain points it accomplishes for users, and how the product is an improvement from existing apps catering to similar services or products, for example, food delivery or service. The author specifies how the proposed system or project can or cannot handle specific actions or issues. The initial section enables individuals to create a detailed application or program framework of what the team needs to build.

2. Provide and Set Limitations to Products or Services

After asking how a product, service, or feature the team creates is unique while addressing specific actions and processes it handles, it must establish which are impossible to do when developing particular methods and developments. This section of the technical specification in writing is the out-of-scope section in the introduction portion of the document. Writing these specifications tells the stakeholders to lessen unrealistic or grand requirements and expectations. As such, a seasoned project manager can help address these situations with experienced-based evidence and how the team can or cannot find solutions for these concerns. For example, the developer team of a banking or food delivery app states that their website or mobile application cannot receive payment in the form of cryptocurrency.

3. Determine the Approach and Plan for the Project

Once the team specifies and addresses the concerns of stakeholders for a product, service, or feature, they must decide on an action plan or project plan on the possible approach they need to take to construct each element in the project. The developers must also accommodate the procedure with detailed and fact-based reasoning for choosing to perform a specific method. For example, a company wants to use a biometric login for their employees upon entering the office building for added security or help with employee schedules. There must be an explanation as to why it is the best possible method for the company and how the team plans to execute the project. There must also be a section that focuses on added company security and privacy, explaining how the project or product plans to prevent data breaches and preserve data and user privacy.

4. Test and Support the Proposed Project

After settling on the plan and drafting the approach the company is going forward with, the development team outlines the process for product testing, deployment, and support strategies. For example, if the group decides to perform live or alpha testing with a certain number of participants, the development team must state it in the technical specification. The document must also contain information about the problems where the company plans to release it, how to monitor user feedback, and how it can offer customer support and services as necessary. Technical specifications require and contain strict detail as it needs to have different sets of requirements, depending on the product they are building.

FAQs

What are the types of technical specification documents?

There are two types or classifications of technical specifications: open and closed specifications. When constructing technical specifications, they contain open specifications representing the parts of the document that tells the builders or constructors the definitive requirements without adding specific details. They are referred to as open specifications because the project process is flexible as long as they meet principal requirements. For closed specifications, explanations are much more detailed. It explains all the materials, tools, designs, and technologies to use, along with details on the requirements to complete the project.

Why are technical specifications important?

Technical specifications are necessary documents for organizations because they guarantee that every personnel or team member agrees on specific requirements or project goals. A technical specification can ensure that what the team plans or develops to create is possible, covering all the necessary bases down to the last detail. The document also provides space for open-ended questions to identify problems and gauge their impact on the project.

What are the main components of a technical specification?

A technical specification must contain a front matter or front page, introduction, solutions, considerations, success measures and evaluations, work, deliberations, and end matter.

Technical specification documents are essential for any organization or company that wants to share all the technical aspects of a project, product, or service, breaking down its functionality and method of use. Through a detailed and well-written technical specification, many developers or engineers provide accurate estimates for the effort they put into the project as it identifies the risks and areas that require extensive research and studies. Creating a detailed technical specification contributes to the positive user or customer satisfaction that goes well beyond their expectations and makes the whole design process much easier and more efficient. Develop a reliable document for the development team to lead the organization into success by downloading the available sample documents in the article only from Sample.net!