Purpose

System requirements provide assurance that the project’s deliverables will function within a basic environment as described by the purchasing organization. Or, system requirements may be used by the project organization to describe the environment in which their deliverables will function, leaving the assurance of the environment to the purchasing organization.

Application

System requirements are often a risk mitigation tool, applied to create a common understanding of an operational environment. A simple piece of outdoor furnituremay not tolerate a tropical rain forest in the same way it would withstand a desert climate. The system requirements give all parties in the project a mental and physical framework from which to assess the potential performance characteristics of the deliverables.

Content

The classic examples of system requirements come with every piece of software ever purchased. They describe the operating systems, computing power, and screen and graphics settings required for the software to operate properly. As such, the system requirements may include a minimum threshold, as well as a delineation of the ideal environment.

Because not all projects are related to information technology and not all information technology projects are consistent in their platform needs, some system requirements documents will be focused primarily on what the new system must be capable of doing. Systems requirements documents may include the following:

•  Minimum requirements. A description of what the system must be capable of doing (buyer’s perspective) or a description of what environment is required for the system to perform optimally (seller’s perspective).

•  Environment. The settings, culture, protocols, practices, or capabilities that should be in place for optimal performance by the system. This may highlight potential performance problems when the environment is less than optimal.

•  Limitations.  Certain  must-have performance criteria or environments in which the system will not function at all. These criteria should be defined in detail.

Approaches

The biggest difference in approach to the system requirements depends on authorship. If the system requirements are written by the buyer, then they will reflect the purchaser’s environment, culture, and conditions. If the requirements are crafted by the seller, they will reveal the seller’s capabilities in different environments and will  provide definition on what environments are optimal for their standard deliverables.

Considerations

Some organizations use the system requirements as a fail-safe to protect against organizations that will not comply with their environment. Organizations that are driven by graphics, for example, often use the “must function on MacIntosh” system requirement to ensure that all of their heavily graphics-oriented personnel will be able to access the products of the deliverable. Because the system requirements may include such diverse elements as temperature, humidity, computer speed, dust, noise levels, and ambient light, the requirements sometimes become a fail-safe for the authors, who can blame the environmental conditions, rather than the project or supporting organization for any performance shortcomings.

Conclusion

No organization will use all of these documents in the initial phases of their projects, but they will use a wide enough array that the project manager should have a clear sense of what the documents should incorporate. Many organizations take standard practices and modify them to meet organizationally specific needs. The key is to be able to achieve a common understanding of what the documents, protocols, and practices are designed to accomplish and to ensure that they accomplish those goals.