"Shouldn't I be eliciting and documenting these specifics?"

Yes, absolutely.

These specifics will be needed, they are specifics about the business, and will be part of Requirements, so capture it all at the beginning so the SME doesn't have to meet with two people to tell about his business twice (that tends to annoy them).

Also, this is prime opportunity to identify business rules separate from other requirements, allowing you the chance to use a BRMS. If coders are asked to get these details, the rules will end up in code (yuchh).

"Are they Business Requirements or are they Functional or System?"

I would class them as Functional Requirements.  Business and System requirements also have varying definitions, but Functionals mean the same thing to most everybody.

"High Level Requirements"

That statement of 'Calculate Sales Tax' is valid requirement statement which, if you call it high or medium level, can be sufficient in certain types of projects;it may be enough, for example, to evaluate software packages. You may also create a set of Requirements at this level of detail to help in scoping or estimating, before heading down to the specifics/details.

There you go...

Dave Wright

www.iag.biz

Christy:

Craig Brown stated that:

"In my expereince a comprehensive approach to the high-level requirements goes a lot further towards project success than dwelling too much on the details.  (That's not to say the details don't matter, just that getting the big picture right should be your first priority.)"

I agree with him.  As (I think) Yourdon used to say "Analysis should proceed in as top-down-a-fashion as possible - else the analyst will drown in an ocean of detail".  If the analyst first captures all the higher level requirements (and especially their interrelationships), then drilling down into the more detailed requirements is a fairly straight-forward process.   But, without this high-level understanding, requirements gathering tends to be very hit-and-miss, as the analyst will have s a hard time seeing the scope of the system.   So go after the details as needed, just proceed as top-down as possible.

Tony