Mastering the Requirements Process

A functional requirement is something that the product must do—an action it must take. The fit criterion specifies how you will know that the product has successfully carried out that action. For functional requirements, there are no scales of measurement: The action is either completed or not completed. Completion depends on satisfying an authority that the product has correctly performed the action. The authority in this case is either the source of the data or the adjacent system that initiated the action.