Work Product (Artifact): Supplementary Specifications
This artifact captures system requirements that are not readily captured in behavioral requirements artifacts such as use-case specifications.
Purpose

The Supplementary Specifications capture the system requirements that are not readily captured in the use cases of the use-case model. Such requirements include:

  • Legal and regulatory requirements, and application standards
  • Quality attributes of the system to be built, including usability, reliability, performance, and supportability requirements
  • Other requirements such as those for operating systems and environments, compatibility with other software, and design constraints
Relationships
Input ToMandatory:
  • None
Optional: External:
  • None
Description
Main Description

The Supplementary Specifications are an important complement to the Use-Case Model, because together they capture all software requirements (functional and nonfunctional) that need to be described to serve as a complete Software Requirements Specification.

Brief Outline

It is recommended that the Supplementary Specification be organized according the requirement categories.  For a description of a categorization approach using the "FURPS+" acronym, see Concept: Requirements.

Properties
Optional
PlannedYes
Illustrations
Key Considerations
The Supplementary Specification captures all system-wide requirements, not just the non-functional ones.  A common misconception is that all functional requirements reside in the Use Case work products and all non-functional requirements reside in the Supplemental Specification work product. This is inaccurate as some functional requirements apply to the system as a whole (such as a requirement for online help). Similarly, some non-functional requirements only apply to a particular use case (or flow within a use case), in which case the requirement should be attached to the use case, otherwise the system will be over-engineered.
Tailoring
Representation Options

The kinds of supplementary requirements vary widely between projects, so tailoring should be applied to define sections applicable to your project.

More Information