FURPS+?

(Professional Business Analyst Training organisation)

•Some requirements are functional and some other are

non-functional in nature also they can segregate at the

same time some requirements can classify technology-

independent and others technology-specific.

•So this give way for the need and necessity of

classification that will allow organisations to think

about different aspects of requirements.

•FURPS is a technique to validate the prioritised

requirements after an understanding with client’s needs

and necessities. The acronym FURPS is Functionality.

•Usability, Reliability, Performance, and Supportability,

over a period of time and grave need raised to see the

solution from more dimensions gave to emergence of

FURPS+.

This FURPS+ technique made the requirements

classification to stress on understanding the different types

of non-functional requirements more.

Traditional BA (Waterfall) Agile BA

Requirements are documented in Use

Cases,Business Requirements, Functional

requirements, UI Specifications, Business Rules.

Requirements are documented in Epics, User

Stories and optionally Business (or Essential) Use

cases.

Focuses on completeness of requirement and

spends time in ensuring the requirement is

unambiguous and has all the details.

Focuses on understanding the problem and being

the domain expert so that s/he can answer

questions from the development team swiftly and

decisively.

Focuses on getting a ‘sign off’ on the requirements.

Focuses on ensuring the requirements meet the

currentbusiness needs, even if it requires

updating them.

Often there is a wall between the BA/Business and

the Development team.

Agile BA (Often called as Product Owner) is part of

the team.

Tends to dictate solutions.

Has to remain in the problem domain, leaving the

development team ‘space’ to explore different

solutions.

Long turnaround. Quick turnaround.

Focus on what the requirements document said. In

other words, output (Artifact) is a well written

thorough requirements document.

Focus on the functionality of the developed

software. In other words, output (Artifact) is the

software that meets thebusiness needs.

Functionality - The F in the FURPS+ acronymrepresents the main product features that are familiarwithin the business domain of the solution beingdeveloped.

The functional requirements can also be verytechnically oriented. Functional requirements that youmay consider to be also architecturally significantsystem-wide functional requirements may includeauditing, licensing, localization, mail, online help,printing, reporting, security, system management, orworkflow.

Usability - Usability includes looking at, capturing, and stating requirements based around user interface issues --things such as accessibility, interface aesthetics, and consistency within the user interface.

Reliability - Reliability includes aspects such as availability, accuracy, and recoverability -- for example, computations, or recoverability of the system from shut-down failure.

Performance - Performance involves things such as throughput of information through the system, system response time (which also relates to usability), recovery time, and start-up time.

Supportability - Finally, we tend to include a section called supportability, where we specify a number of other requirements such as testability, adaptability, maintainability, compatibility, configurability, installability, scalability, localizability, and so on.

+The "+" of the FURPS+ acronym allows us to specify constraints, including design, implementation, interface, and physical constraints.

Design constraints - A design constraint, as the name implies, limits the design -- for example, requiring a relational database stipulates the approach that we take in developing the system.

Implementation constraints - An implementationconstraint puts limits on coding or construction -standards, platform, or implementation language.

Interface constraints - An interface constraint is arequirement to interact with an external item. Whenyou develop within an enterprise, quite often you haveto interact with external systems

Physical constraints - Physical constraints affect the hardware used to house the system - for example, shape, size, and weight.