preview

Professional Writing in Computer Science Essay

Good Essays

A Computer Software Engineer develops software systems to be used by their clients, such as a website used to sell the client’s products. Although software engineers spend the majority of their time programming and testing the software, a key component to the success of a software engineer is the ability to write a thorough Software Requirement Specification (SRS). A SRS documents the requirements and dependencies needed for the software, prior to beginning any programming. Therefore, a Software Engineer must po The SRS is so important because engineers can have a wide scope of clients that they regularly work with. Audience A SRS documents the requirements and dependencies needed for the software, prior to beginning any programming. …show more content…

This review and evolution process is repeated as many times as needed, until the final Formal Spec is produced, or the SRS. Then programming can begin. “The process of writing a requirements specification usually requires frequent communications between the developer and the client, keeping the structure of the specification clear and the statements or expressions used readable is therefore crucial”(Lui et al.). Consequences and Time Spent The reason that a SRS is needed should be rather obvious; if the requirements aren’t written down, how do the software engineers know what to program, and how does the client know what to expect? (Berezin) However, the SRS is often times skipped, or written at a very high level, lacking enough detail. Taking the user requirements and writing them into specifications is considered to be one of the most difficult steps in software development, and therefore engineers frequently attempt to bypass this step. It is also very time consuming – are the engineers wasting their time writing the SRS when they should be programming? In discussing this with Cheryl Lindauer, the Corporate Development Manager at Shoe Carnival, the answer is an outstanding NO! “The best investment any company can make is to write detailed SRS documents for every project, before beginning any coding. If we are in a time crunch and skip the SRS document,

Get Access