Do SRS documents have a format?

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I am writing a SRS document for the 1st time!

Do I have to follow a particular pattern or format?

please provide an example or anything that provides an idea about the document

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John R. Strohm On

The US Department of Defense has spent a LOT of money on software development projects. They kept notes on what worked and what didn't, especially in documentation and activities to produce that documentation.

The key concept behind it all is that the contractor is forced to do certain things in order to produce the required information for the various specifications. For the Software Requirements Specification, the contractor has to collect AND RECORD the actual requirements. To produce a Software Design Specification, the contractor must actually design the software, and document the design, before jumping headlong into coding.

DoD promulgated DOD-STD-2167A and related Data Item Descriptions (DIDs). Among them is the DOD-STD-2167A Software Requirements Specification (SRS) DID.

The standard and several DIDs may be found at:

http://www.continuum.org/~brentb/DOD2167A.html

DoD later phased out DOD-STD-2167A in favor of a corresponding IEEE standard and set of DIDs, but the IEEE standard and DIDs basically boil down to "The contractor may do whatever he pleases, including nothing useful." The DOD-STD-2167A DIDs require the contractor to address certain areas and issues whose omission is known to have caused trouble in the past. Additionally, DOD-STD-2167A and its DIDs are free (as in beer); the IEEE documents most certainly are not.