It is recognized that coding constitutes around 30% of software development activities that includes Requirement specification, design, coding and testing. As discussed in the previous article roles other than software programmers also become important in IT organizations. This article will discuss role of Functional Specialists in IT Industry.

As Software mainly aims at automation of business processes, an understanding of business processes enables software organization to understand requirements and develop software that meets expectations of users. All software development teams consist of Functional Specialists.

• Qualifications for a Functional Specialist: Management Degree in respective functional areas
• Industry experience e.g. MBA in Finance can define business processes for software targeted for Financial Market.

Responsibilities of Functional Specialist:

• Understand customer requirements
• Discuss business processes
• Define software requirements
• Clarify business processes

Challenges in the role:

Functional Specialist needs to understand basic technical details of Software being developed. Communicating business requirements to technical team is a major challenge. Translating business process requirements to software terminology and explaining the same is a major challenge.

Any feature discussions involve individuals with varying background, experience. Specifying expectations in a uniform language that everyone understands is a tough challenge. Unified Modeling Language (UML) approach of specifying requirements attempts to resolve this gap.

Documentation of requirements is a very critical task on which software development life cycle depends. Being inexperienced in defining requirements necessitates the functional specialist explaining requirements through multiple presentations to the technical team.

Understanding user requirements and expectations is a major challenge. Arriving at a highly detailed functional specification is a tedious task

Establishing a change management process. Most of the software projects will have feature creep where the user requirements change after the development has started. Revisions and changes to user requirements need to be studied properly and communicated to the team as early as possible.

Tips to play an effective role as Functional Specialist:

• Develop a sound mechanism for understanding user requirements and expectations.
• Understand Requirements Definition is the most difficult and crucial stage of software development
• Don’t hurry through Requirements Definition stage
• Technical team would be eager to develop and deliver the product as soon as possible. They like delivering products. Ensure requirements are clearly communicated to avoid rework. Rework drastically reduces software quality.
• Develop sound system for communication management. Make effective use of e-mail for the same.
• Understand Technical Jargon of the company fast.

Functional Specialist role may have different designations across companies. But the role of Functional Specialist to Software Development Organizations is very critical. This role allows one to leverage on their Industry experience to develop and deploy software.