Software Requirements Template for Ethiopian Organizations

Download the template

Open the plain-text software requirements template. Copy it into your preferred document system, assign an owner to each unanswered item, and share the same approved version with every supplier.

The template is inspired by practical requirements-engineering principles. It is not a substitute for legal, security, financial, accessibility, clinical, or regulatory advice.

1. Document control

Record the project name, organization, document owner, version, date, status, reviewers, approvers, and change history. Requirements without an owner and version quickly become conflicting promises.

2. Problem and intended outcome

Describe the current problem in observable terms. Who experiences it? How often? What evidence exists? What happens if nothing changes? Define the intended outcome and the baseline metric that will be compared after launch.

Avoid starting with "we need an app." Start with the user or operational problem and the decision the organization needs to improve.

3. Scope boundaries

List what the first phase includes, explicitly excludes, and may consider later. Name affected departments, branches, products, processes, systems, countries, and user groups. Record constraints such as deadline, budget governance, provider approval, policy, procurement, or data availability.

4. Stakeholders and decisions

Name the sponsor, product owner, process owners, subject-matter experts, data owner, security owner, technical owner, finance or procurement contact, legal or privacy reviewer, testers, trainers, support owner, and final acceptance authority.

For each open decision record the owner and due date. Supplier time cannot compensate for unavailable business decisions.

5. Users and operating context

For each user group document goals, tasks, permissions, experience, language, accessibility needs, devices, browsers, connectivity, shared-device use, location, support needs, and frequency of use. Include administrators, reviewers, support staff, auditors, and people affected by a decision even if they do not log in.

6. Current and future workflows

Map trigger, normal steps, decisions, approvals, handoffs, exceptions, corrections, cancellation, escalation, outputs, records, and completion. Identify pain points and controls that must remain. Then describe the future workflow without assuming a particular screen.

7. Functional requirements

Give every requirement an identifier, priority, rationale, source, owner, dependencies, and acceptance method. Write testable statements. For example: "A finance approver can reject a submitted expense with a required reason, and the submitter can see the status and reason" is more useful than "easy approval system."

8. Data requirements

List entities, fields, identifiers, source, owner, validation, sensitivity, access, retention, deletion, export, reporting, and audit needs. For migration, add source systems, volume, history, attachments, mapping, cleanup, trial runs, reconciliation, cutover, rejected records, and sign-off.

9. Integrations

For each provider or system record business purpose, owner, official documentation, account and onboarding status, sandbox, authentication, data exchanged, frequency, limits, retries, idempotency, reconciliation, monitoring, versioning, support, security, fallback, and acceptance tests.

Do not label an integration "available" until commercial and technical access have been verified.

10. Quality requirements

Define measurable expectations for:

• performance and response under representative networks and devices;
• availability, maintenance windows, monitoring, and recovery;
• capacity, growth, and rate limits;
• accessibility and assistive-technology testing;
• supported browsers, devices, platforms, and versions;
• localization, terminology, date, number, currency, and content ownership;
• usability, task completion, errors, and help;
• auditability, reporting accuracy, and reconciliation;
• maintainability, documentation, testing, deployment, and observability.

11. Security and privacy

Document identity, authentication, authorization, least privilege, segregation of duties, administrator control, session rules, encryption, secret management, logs, alerts, dependency management, backups, recovery testing, vulnerability response, incident ownership, retention, deletion, consent, data sharing, sensitive exports, and independent review.

Classify information and seek qualified advice for applicable Ethiopian and sector requirements.

12. Analytics and reporting

Define each report and event: purpose, user, fields, formula, filters, source, refresh, timezone, access, export, quality check, owner, and limitation. For product analytics, prohibit unnecessary personal or sensitive information and define consent and retention where required.

13. Acceptance and release

For each milestone identify deliverable, review period, environment, test data, acceptance criteria, evidence, approver, defect treatment, and payment relationship. Include migration reconciliation, security checks, accessibility, performance, user acceptance, training, operating procedure, backup, recovery, deployment, rollback, and launch support.

14. Ownership and handover

List who owns and controls source repositories, code rights, data, domains, hosting, cloud accounts, app-store accounts, provider accounts, analytics, designs, content, licenses, certificates, secrets, backups, documentation, build and deployment access. Define export and transition assistance.

15. Support and lifecycle

Define warranty, service hours, severity, response and restoration target, support channel, escalation, monitoring, maintenance, backups, upgrades, security patches, custom-code compatibility, training, knowledge transfer, new work, recurring charges, renewal, and termination.

16. Commercial assumptions

Require an itemized estimate separating discovery, design, implementation, migration, integration, infrastructure, provider fees, testing, training, warranty, support, travel, taxes, currency, internal effort, contingency, and options. Record the validity date and change-control method.

17. Risks, assumptions, and open questions

Maintain a live register with description, likelihood, impact, owner, mitigation, trigger, and status. Common risks include unavailable data, provider approval, unclear policy, late decisions, migration quality, device constraints, connectivity, adoption, custom-code upgrades, staffing, and supplier dependency.

18. Traceability checklist

Before approval, confirm that each high-priority requirement has a source, owner, rationale, implementation or configuration decision, test or evidence method, acceptance authority, and release status. This keeps scope, delivery, and verification connected.

Primary reference

• ISO/IEC/IEEE 29148 requirements engineering overview