At Openlabs we encourage our customers in joint preparation of the requirement specification. According to the IEEE Standard 803, software development process should begin with supplier and customer agreement on what the completed software must do and further advices joint preparation for the following reasons:

• 1. Customers usually do not understand the software design and development process well enough to write a usable SRS.
• 2. Suppliers usually do not understand the customer's problem and field of endeavor well enough to specify requirements for a satisfactory system.

A standard template would consist of (based on IEEE 803)

• 1. Introduction
• • 1.1 Purpose
• • 1.2 Scope
• • 1.3 Definitions, Acronyms, and Abbrevations
• • 1.5 Overview

• 2. Overall Description
• • 2.1 Product Perspective
• • 2.2 Product Functions
• • 2.3 User Characteristics
• • 2.4 Constraints
• • 2.5 Assumptions and dependencies

• 3. Specific Requirements
• • 3.1 External interface requirements
• • • 3.1.1 User interfaces
• • • 3.1.2 Hardware interfaces
• • • 3.1.3 Software interfaces
• • • 3.1.4 Communications interfaces
• • 3.2 System features
• • • 3.2.1 Feature 1
• • • 3.2.2 Feature 2
• • • 3.2.3 Feature 3
• • • 3.2.4 Feature 4
• • 3.3 Performance requirements
• • 3.4 Design constraints
• • 3.5 Software system attributes
• • 3.6 Other requirements