Functional Specification

A functional specification (also, functional spec, specs, functional specifications document (FSD), functional requirements specification, or Program specification) in systems engineering and software development is the documentation that describes the requested behavior of an engineering system. The documentation typically describes what is needed by the system user as well as requested properties of inputs and outputs (e.g. of the software system). A functional specification is the more technical response onto a matching requirements document, e.g. the Product Requirement Document "PRD". Thus it picks up the results of the requirements analysis stage. On more complex systems multiple levels of functional specifications will typically nest to each other, e.g. on the system level, on the module level and on the level of technical details.