What is features vs functional requirements?
Features and functional requirements refer to different aspects of a software system, and they serve different purposes in the software development process.
Features: A feature is a high-level product characteristic that describes a service, function, or design of a product that offers value to its users. Features are often used in the planning or marketing stages of a product to outline the overall functionality or capability that the product will contain.
For example, in a word processing software, “Spell Check” could be a feature, as it provides a distinct service or function within the software that offers value to the users.
Functional Requirements: Functional requirements, on the other hand, are more detailed and specific descriptions of the system behavior, outlining exactly how a particular feature should work. These are typically written from the perspective of the end user and describe individual functionalities that a software system must possess.
Using the same example, if “Spell Check” is a feature, a functional requirement might state, “The software must underline misspelled words in red as the user types” or “The software must provide suggested correct spellings when a word is right-clicked.”
In essence, features describe “what” a product does, while functional requirements detail “how” those features will operate to meet user expectations. Both are crucial in software development, with features providing the high-level view of the system’s capabilities and functional requirements breaking those down into detailed descriptions of the system’s behavior.
To know more about What is features vs functional requirements? click on below article.