Process specification is a generic term for the specification of a process. Its context is not unique to "business activity" but can be applied to any organizational activity.

Within some structured methods, the capitalized term Process Specification refers to a description of the procedure

Procedure (term)

A procedure is a sequence of actions or operations which have to be executed in the same manner in order to always obtain the same result under the same circumstances ....

 to be followed by an actor within an elementary level business activity, as represented on a process model such as a dataflow diagram or IDEF0

IDEF0

IDEF0 is a function modeling methodology for describing manufacturing functions, which offers a functional modeling language for the analysis, development, reengineering, and integration of information systems; business processes; or software engineering analysis.IDEF0 is part of the IDEF family...

 model. A common alias is minispec short for miniature specification.

Use in systems development

The process specification defines what must be done in order to transform inputs into outputs. It is a detailed set of instructions outlining a business procedure that each elementary level business activity is expected to carry out. Process specifications are commonly included as an integral component of a requirements document in systems development.

Techniques

There are a variety of approaches that can be used to produce a process specification including

• decision tables
• structured English (favored technique of most systems analysts)
• pre/post conditions
• use cases, basic course or events/alternate paths in use cases
• flowcharts.
• Nassi–Shneiderman diagram
• UML
  Unified Modeling Language
  Unified Modeling Language is a standardized general-purpose modeling language in the field of object-oriented software engineering. The standard is managed, and was created, by the Object Management Group...
  
   Activity diagram
  Activity diagram
  Activity diagrams are graphical representations of workflows of stepwise activities and actions with support for choice, iteration and concurrency. In the Unified Modeling Language, activity diagrams can be used to describe the business and operational step-by-step workflows of components in a system...
  
  

No matter what approach is used, it must communicate to system development designers, implementers and support professionals, as well as be verifiable by the stakeholders/end users.

External links

• Chapter 11 of the Structured Analysis Wiki, by Ed Yourdon