Establishment of Requirements - Requirements Engineering and Management for Software Development Projects - page 80

SRS is normally approved by the internal sources unless the contractual

arrangements mandate approval from the customer.
Before, the document is submitted for internal approval, it should have been
subjected to the planned quality control activities. The approving authority would
ensure that the document has indeed passed through the quality control activities and
is cleared for approval. Then he/she would carry out a managerial review of the
document and provide the feedback to the originator of the document. Managerial
reviews are detailed in Chap. 6 . Once the feedback is implemented to the satisfaction
of the approving authority, internal approval is granted. The internal approval may
be a signature on a hard copy of the document or it can be an email or it can be digital
signature depending on the practice within the specific organization. The approval
information in whatever form, is stored for future reference and records. In the case
of requirements documents, in some organizations, the person holding charge of the
service delivery department (also frequently referred to as the technical head or
delivery head) accords internal approval and in others, the software project manager
accords the internal approval. Normally the approving authorities for various doc-
uments are named in the organizational process documents.
The artifacts can be submitted to customer organization for approval only after
obtaining the internal approval. In the case of internal projects, approval of the IS
department is essential before submitting to the client department. The customer,
be it internal or external, needs to review the document before according approval
to move forward on the project. This review can be a guided review or a postal
review. Various types of reviews are explained in Chap. 6 . The client feedback, if
any, needs to be implemented in the document and re-submitted for approval. The
client would review the implementation of the feedback and upon being satisfied
that the requirements are properly understood by the software

development

organization, approval would be accorded to the document.
It is normal practice to submit URS for client approval. SRS would be sub-
mitted for client approval only in cases where it is a contractual requirement.
Normally, clients would not like to look at SRS as it is more of a design document
than a requirements document.

5.5 Configuration Management

Configuration Management is an important aspect of software engineering and
software project management in ensuring that the right software artifacts (code
artifacts and information artifacts) are delivered to the customer. Configuration
management assumes much more importance in software development, than in
manufacturing, as the artifacts are maintained in soft copy form, it is possible for
different versions of an artifact to exist concurrently. In manufacturing, two ver-
sions of the same part cannot exist at the same time. While it is possible for different
versions of engineering drawings to exist concurrently, the drawing release process
ensures that earlier versions are withdrawn before newer versions are issued.