Heh. At work, to handle the requirements of a project, I simply used Excel and created a matrix of features. I used 9 columns:

1. Status: {D=Done, F=Feature, G=Grid, D=Duplicate}
2. Document: [the hard copy paper I'm trying to replace]
3. Legacy Form: There is an old app they were using. I'm integrating Legacy app + hard copy = to a new module, inside an existing application.
4. Legacy Field: What the old field was called in the legacy app.
5. Form: [The name of the form\tab with the feature is to be done in]
6. Table: Table in the database to put this feature in
7. Field: Field name to give it.
8. Exists: Perhaps this exists already. No need to reinvent the wheel.
9. Comments: Thinks to check for when implementing this feature. Special cases?

And then I go off and meet with the client and go through every row (feature) in the matrix. I had about 200+ features. For my iteration 1 of my project, I elliminated soooo much duplicate infomation. Their business process had changed and thus there was a lot of garbage fields that no one used and everyone was too scared to delete.

Then I go through this matrix in an iterative manner and bit by bit implement the features.

I prefer this method of contructing software rather than writing design documents. Documents with too many words that are used to contruct the software can sometimes cause different interpretations. Thus this is better....

Just thought I'ld show you what how a crappy programmer such as myself does things :-P

D=Duplicate should be R=Repeat. Oh, the irony.

Spreadsheets are a project manager's best friend. They are more flexible than software (ie. Bugzilla) and are easy for everyone to use and read.

The only problem is that they don't scale well for larger projects. But for smaller ones they are great.

Yup. Wouldn't wanna do that for a monster app. I think inadverdantly (sp.?), throughout all my Software and Hardware design, I've always used some sort of matrix to keep track of feature design, and even verification charts.

I did that a lot when I used to make Hardware jigs for testings. Lots of 1's and 0's :-P

One thing I didn't really make clear about spreadsheets above is their lack of infrastructure. You don't need to install custom software (like Bugzilla for example, or a project reporting/analysing/data mining tool), you just need Microsoft/Open Office.

It makes it quite easy to whip up a grid to demonstrate a point by displaying project metrics (semi-)graphically or mathematically.