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On 11 Aug 2016, at 6:44, Stewart Bryant wrote:
Optional is useful in a requirements RFC.
Feature x is REQUIRED
Feature y is OPTIONAL
One last (and perhaps fruitless) attempt to keep this section and deprecate the adjectives:
Using REQUIRED and OPTIONAL results in exactly the problem of using passive voice anywhere: REQUIRED by whom?
I could have said:
Foo is a REQUIRED feature of a complete implementation of this specification.
Perhaps I used too small an illustrative fragment. As to passive voice, it seems that many, including myself, prefer this style of technical writing.
OPTIONAL for whom? If you say, "A MUST do X and B MAY do Y", it is perfectly clear which actor is responsible (and in network protocols there are inevitably at least 2). If you say "X is REQUIRED and Y is OPTIONAL", you'll end up needing more text to explain the actors and their roles.
Using REQUIRED and OPTIONAL is lazy. It makes specs less clear. They ought to be dropped.
That really is not true when listing requirements, as is illustrated later in the thread. |