Do people no longer keep functional specifications for on-going application improvement?

[Spoton Tennison]

Most efforts I see in large organization, internal system software development is on-going improvements, tweaks, overhauls to existing systems, etc..  Systems are CRM,  large customer support, work flow, billing, collections, etc. Years and years of changes. Given changes of people and processes and technology, how do you know what a system is doing when you start a given project? emails? experts? People on Agile teams here are saying things like, "go find a developer who worked on it last and have him look at the code"... Or go find the last director of the line of business using the software.... There are no functional specs. Functioning software is all that matters, etc.

[Gregory Van Den Ham · Accepted solution]

That seems like poor practice, though not uncommon at all.  Our practices require Confluence documentation to be created and maintained.  That includes system diagrams, flow, API documentation, integrations, customization, etc.  No Story is crossed off the list without a check being done.

If your shop is SOC2, ISOxxx, or other complaint - This is also a huge requirement.  These types of documents have to be signed off on at least yearly that they are current.

... And we haven't even talked about requirements for change control ;)

[Spoton Tennison]

Thanks. It turns out our application is not SOC2. (I asked my manager). I thought it was. Still, your answer makes sense. I've started to maintain evergreen "specs" in Confluence, with the types of things you list; and link them to stories as they come and go in Jira. Thanks!