System Design Documents (28)
Description:
In this building block, the project team develops the technical system design documents based on the concept of operations and other previously developed documents. At a minimum, these documents must include a system requirements specification document and any needed interface control documents. Optionally, they may also include user interface or experience guidelines or specifications. The main goal of these documents is system procurement and development and record maintenance. Specifications should include the entire system—both state and vendor components—though these may be specified in separate chapters.
Details:
Use systems engineering processes to develop these documents. The first document to develop is the system requirements specifications. Interface control documents should be developed only when separate systems from separate vendors must interface. User-experience documents are generally guidelines, not requirements.
Primary Use:
Specify system for procurement.
Best Practices/Lessons Learned:
- Develop the system requirements specification with inputs from both impacted state organizations and private vendors.
- Get extensive vendor input on interface control documents.
- Bring in user-experience specialists to develop user-experience documents.
- Include callouts to business rules where appropriate. Although some overlap is inevitable, try to complement rather than duplicate the content in the business rules. Requirements should be more technical, and business rules should be more business focused.
- Update specification documents when requirements change, but if vendors must update their systems based on such changes, they may charge the state a change order.
State Government Context and Assumptions:
The implementing RUC agency, with consultant support as needed, completes this task, following the assembly of the concept of operations.