functionl specification

[Former Member]

hi...

In the functional specifications, the functional consultant wt r the inputs given to the abapers to resolve the gap

[Former Member]

Hi,

Functional specs are written when the standard SAP is not able to meet the client's requirement. Based on the functional spec the ABAPer will write the technical design doc. and then the functional guy will test the same in the system and document the results in his test script.

We come across 3 situations which calls for functional specs to be written

1. Enhancements /modifications. If business requires some special procedure.

2. Reports, Client's customized reports.

3. Interface, EDI interface involves ALE/IDOC.

Here are some tips to write great functional specs. The objective should be that the technical guy should understand it in one go and to reduce any further clarification.

1. Understand the requirement completely. This will depend on your business understanding. Make sure that the client's requirement cannot be met through standard SAP before working on it. Please suggest the client if any alternative business process which is supported by SAP and meets his requirement too.

2. In case of reports you must be competent to decide whether it's a R/3 or BW report. one example - if the report involves data analytics (like you do in pivot table of excel) it will be a BW report. However its data collection will be done in R/3.

3. You must mention the business need and business value the report/enhancement will add to the business. This is for future reference and also to convince the other users.

4. Any legacy system changes to be done once the enhancement/report is run should also be mentioned. You can mention changes regarding business process or data. This may be an input for change management team and also for cut-over strategy.

5. In case of interface please do mention if it's a display or non display document.

6. Please do not write the structure in place of table and field. Make some effort and find out in which field the data is stored. ABAPer will appreciate it.

7. Don't just write table and field name but also give the data pulling logic. This is perhaps the most important part. At times it is really difficult to make the technical guy understand how the data is getting pulled. Without understanding this he can't proceed further.

8. Be careful about the data volume while designing the input screen of a customized report. You must very carefully decide which of these should be mandatory and optional else it will create a performance issue at the time of load testing.

Please note that every implementation has its own unique format for writing functional specs however the above mentioned points needs to be covered to make it more communicative and effective.

Thanks

[Former Member]

Hi ,

For FSD, the functional consultant should clearly mention, what exactly he wants, and also should specity the technical names of the fields from where the values should be pulled, and also should give a format of how the selection screen should look like, and what are the values that we are expecting in the out put , along with the out put screen.

With out these things technical (ABAP) people cannot understand what exactly the requirement is and will end up in a confusion.

So when ever there is a FSD writen, make sure every thing has been incorporated in that document, with field names , logic, and out put etc.

All the best,