Talk:Projects/Ecommerce Integration/FunctionalSpecifications
Comments on the version from July 9th, 2008
The suggested approach in the document is probably correct but it is very difficult to assess that and to read it. It looks like you are jumping to conclusions without having done the analysis (I'm sure you have done it but it is not in the document, or at least it is not easily understandable).
I would ask you to be as consistent as possible to the standard functional specification template. You can see [1] as an example. In particular the functional requirements section is the most important one and I would suggest to populate it as follows:
- User roles and profiles: who are the people involved here? (I would assume: the administrator setting up the integration; the shopper; the sales manager; the warehouse worker, etc.)
- Business process definition: this is really important. What are the processes that we are targeting? Sales? Procurement? I assume sales only. How deep do we want to go? Is it simply taking an order through a on line catalog and process it in Openbravo? What about billing? What if the order is delayed? What if the product is out of stock?
- User stories: examples that illustrate the processes above (i.e. John wants to buy a new computer and goes to web site X...)
- Functional requirements based on business processes: based on the above processes, it would be good to have a diagram that illustrates which systems are involved (Openbravo ERP and the ecommerce system), which system is the source of truth for which transaction and how the information flows between the two (i.e. a new customer registers on the ecommercesite and the customer is automatically created in Openbravo)
- Based on this exchange of information, we need to design the web services that are required and how we orchestrate them.
More on a formal perspective:
- In the introduction, the debate on B2B vs. B2C is not relevant and I would avoid it. You can simply state that the current project is about integrating Openbravo ERP with an on line shopping application.
- The mention to Verisign and Paypal is a detail not appropriate in the introduction. Perhaps you can put it in the assumptions section.
- The General Requirements could go in the Non Functional Requirements section of the template.
- The Integration Overview could go in the Technical Requirements section of the template.
- Grammar: watch out for capitalization rules[2], especially in the introduction.
- Terminology: there is a big debate of whether the right term is E-Commerce, e-commerce, eCommerce or ecommerce. In line with the general trend of adopting Internet terminology as standard English words (for example: it is now generally accepted that email is the correct spelling and not e-mail or eMail), I would adopt the term ecommerce.
Paolo
[1]http://wiki.openbravo.com/wiki/Projects/Outbound_Email/Specifications [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Capital_letters
Hello Paolo,
Thanks for your comments and suggestion. I have just updated the specification to reflect these.
Regards,
Jordi,
--Jordimas 17:50, 5 August 2008 (CEST)