Hi Lisa,

Can you provide a bit more background regarding your question?

Unfortunately the term "Systems Analyst" is used by different organizations in many different ways to mean many different things.  For example: the role of the Systems Analyst in the Maintenance Release Process could vary as follows:

• If the role of the systems analyst is to create functional specifications then maybe the only thing he/she does is let's the Release Manager know that the specifications for a given set of changes are complete and can be scheduled in a given release.
• In some organizations the Systems Analyst plays the role of the Release Manager, in which case he she is needs to perform release management tasks: coordinating and scheduling releases, ensuring releases have been deployed successfully, etc.

- Adrian

Hello Lisa

In this case I would assume your role is to define the functional specifications, to liaise with the business stakeholders, or their representative (is there a business side BA?) and to liaise with the solutions team including assessing solutions and participating in the validation (testing) and implementation activities. 

This is a pretty wide ranging role so questions probably need to be specific t the project phase you are in or about to go into for us to be able to give meaningful and concise answers.

If you are about to embark on writing a functional specification you should try to get you hands on 2-3 existing ones from your organisation so you can see what sort o content and detail is appropriate.  You should also meet with the solution design and discuss their expectations.

Lastly, here are two functional specification templates I just looked up on Google.  They look to be pretty comprehensive and are from reliable sites.  

http://www.stcsig.org/mgt/docs/uncspectempl.pdf

http://www.pragmaticsw.com/Pragmatic/Templates/FunctionalSpec.rtf 

You should consider omitting things you aren't going to use and adding things you think are missing.  Templates are tools, but can't answer all your questions.

I hope this helps you out.  Ask for more if you need to.

Craig

www.betterprojects.net