Functional specification

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A functional specification (also, functional spec, specs, functional specifications document (FSD), functional requirements specification) in systems engineering and software development is a document that specifies the functions that a system or component must perform (often part of a requirements specification) (ISO/IEC/IEEE 24765-2010).^[1]

The documentation typically describes what is needed by the system user as well as requested properties of inputs and outputs (e.g. of the software system). A functional specification is the more technical response to a matching requirements document, e.g. the Product Requirements Document "PRD"^{[citation needed]}. Thus it picks up the results of the requirements analysis stage. On more complex systems multiple levels of functional specifications will typically nest to each other, e.g. on the system level, on the module level and on the level of technical details.