Professional PHP Design Patterns

20.4. Updated Requirements Discussion

A few of the changes I've made to the requirements documentation bear the need of some discussion:

• I refer to the Outlook application directly. I think it's important to detail this throughout the requirements. The executive summary still stays brief, but the scope and specifics mention the application by name. This is important because the executive summary only needs to mention what the objective is. The details should nail down what the company "address book system" really is. It's quite possible that not everyone uses the same address book software. Since the stakeholders have identified the Outlook software as the official address book I should consider, designating this particular software in the requirements protects my interests. I am not expected to develop more than one type of import sequence initially.

• I removed the mention of Internet Explorer from some of the requirements. Instead, it's a constraint that I should focus on Internet Explorer compatibility first. I did not want to make the requirements falsely state that Internet Explorer was the only browser that could be used to view the application.

• In regard to the mobile browser, since the only supported mobile phones are those issued by the company, it was important to mention this. With Java-based browsers, Safari-based browsers, and other operating systems hitting phones, it's good to tighten up this requirement. The foremost functionality is business based, so we want to ...