Business vs Functional Requirements

In the terms of reference, both business requirements for the system and functional requirements are recorded: freelance service technician

- Business requirements are a description of what the system should do  in the language of the business user. Business requirements, in particular, must be clear to a leader with no technical training or experience.

- Functional requirements are a description of HOW certain actions are performed in the system. At the stage of developing a technical assignment, functional requirements are usually fixed only for the most complex blocks of the project. Deepening into difficult areas allows you to reduce risks in the subsequent assessment of the project. Typically functional requirements include flowcharts, state diagrams, flowcharts, and are complemented by layouts for the most complex screens.

Example business requirement:

“For an advertising campaign, it is important to track the limit of impressions as accurately as possible in order to avoid financial losses associated with displaying banners in excess of the paid limit. In addition, the task arises to limit the display of one banner to one user, for example, no more than N times a day. "

An example of a functional requirement:

“To solve this problem  [for what - see above],  it is supposed to use an external service, to which banner servers will contact each time the banner is displayed. Since this service is a point of failure, banner servers must correctly handle the situation when an external service is unavailable or responds with delays. "

We usually include

The terms of reference contains a description of the roles and main user scenarios in the system being developed.

In the case of the banner advertising system, we will highlight such a scenario as the creation of an advertising space by a user in the Administrator role.

Scenario name: Create ad slot

Role: Administrator

An example of a functional requirement:

“After adding a new site to the system, the administrator must create advertising slots associated with it. When creating an ad space, the site, type of space, supported banner format, size, frequency of impressions (for static places) must be indicated. Once an ad slot is created, it becomes available to managers who advertise.

Each ad slot created receives a universal identifier that is used by the content management system in a request to display banners. To do this, you need to make the appropriate changes to the code of the site page ".

The terms of reference contains requirements for the integration of the developed system with other external and internal systems used by the customer.

In the context of the terms of reference for the banner system, this is integration with the company's site management systems, billing, authentication and user data storage.

"The banner advertising system is linked to three external modules operating in the company's environment: the company's site management system, the billing system, and the user authentication and data storage system." Each banner display is accompanied by a request from the  content management system  to the banner system. These systems also share common ad space and ad slot identifiers and consistent targeting parameter names. " 

In the terms of reference, we usually include a  glossary that explains the meanings of specific terms used in the document. It is very important to accurately define the meaning of the terms that are subsequently used in the document.

“ Placement (placement unit, media plan line) is  an entity that unites the banner that needs to be shown, the ad space on which the banner will be shown, as well as display rules. Display rules determine the placement period, targeting parameters, placement limits, weights, etc. In fact, all advertising campaigns consist of placements. "