High-quality, effective products and systems start with a clear understanding of what the product or system needs to do. And that understanding has to be conveyed to multuple partners, including those in marketing, engineering, purchasing, and the executive suite.
This blog is the first in Tecnova's series on requirements specifications. The series answers key questions about:
- The characteristics of good requirements specifications
- What happens when requirements specifications are poor
- How you can improve your company's performance by using a requirements specification template
Who Needs Good Requirements Specifications?
Requirements specifications may be written in the language of engineers, but the process of creating crystal-clear specifications is one that multiple partners must be involved in in order to achieve product success.
Marketing: Marketing staff are constantly evaluating what’s needed in the marketplace and what new products and prototypes will fill those gaps. In working to develop and improve products, they need to be able to communicate all of the essential information about a product accurately to both external and internal partners. When that communication is effective and clear, it increases the chances of the product being developed and manufactured successfully, and of sales goals being reached.
Engineering: Engineering staff are under pressure to get products out the door on time and on budget. With 50% of product failures happening as a result of poor requirements, engineers also are under pressure to ensure that the risk of defects, delays, and missed functionality is minimized. Yet they often deal with missing or unclear information about the vision for a product. The quality of that information can be dramatically improved when all teams and partners are using tools and processes to clearly communicate about specifications on an ongoing basis.
Purchasing: Purchasing depends on solid requirements to write RFPs, coordinate with suppliers, and make sure engineers and products managers have the right materials. Good specifications give the purchasing team confidence that they are making choices that contribute to the company's bottom line, from supply chain decisions to choosing the right manufacturing partner.
Executive: On a strategic level, executives are looking for improved business performance and satisfied stakeholders. It's been found that companies using poor requirements practices will experience significantly higher costs to produce applications, longer wait times for implementation, and poorer achievement of strategic project objectives. Excellence in requirements specifications leads to departmental accountability and of course return on investment when costly complications are tackled prior to manufacturing.
Unifying Your Team Around Better Specifications
Solid requirements specifications are imperative to delivering business value and improving business outcomes across multiple teams. Using a requirements specification template can get your product development off on the right foot by giving all teams and partners a shared tool for working together to ensure the quality and accuracy of your specifications.
