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Business Requirements Template

Business Requirements Template

Run this checklist to identify key stakeholder needs to be met via a new project, product, service, system, or software.
1
Introduction:
2
Record checklist details
3
Requirements identification:
4
Identify your team
5
Determine how you will identify requirements
6
Conduct interviews with relevant stakeholders
7
Run focus groups
8
Run workshops
9
Support group creativity techniques
10
Produce and hand-out surveys
11
Create a product prototype (products only)
12
Identify your requirements
13
Requirements analysis:
14
Determine the work activities that correspond to the given requirement
15
Determine requirement accountability
16
Determine requirement priority
17
Decipher metrics and acceptance criteria
18
Requirements Documentation:
19
View your business requirements report notes
20
Approval: Managerial approval
21
Document requirements in a Business Requirements Document
22
Decide on methodology to be used to track and report on the status of each requirement
23
Create a project requirements checklist
24
Manage change in your organization
25
Ongoing requirement management:
26
Ensure ongoing reporting on requirement status
27
Implement systems to raise awareness and concern
28
Ensure flexibility is introduced to change or alter requirements
29
Sources:
30
Related checklists:

Introduction:

Use this Business Requirements Template to detail a business solution in the form of a new product, service, or project, documenting stakeholder needs, and expectations.

Every new activity, product, or project is started to deliver on a specific business need. Sometimes though, there can be a mismatch between what has been designed and what is needed.

With a focussed business requirements analysis, such mismatches can be avoided. This is achieved through the process of discovering, analyzing, defining, and documenting the requirements.

This Business Requirement Template will assist you in the assessment of business requirements for a new product/service or project.

The objectives of this template are:

  • Gain stakeholder agreement for the new product/service or project,
  • Communicate needed solutions that satisfy customer and business needs,
  • Provide the required input to introduce the changes necessary,
  • Describe what and how the customer/business needs will be met by your introduced changes.

This checklist has been produced from referring to the Project Management Docs, Requirements Management Plan

How to use this checklist

At the beginning of this checklist, you will be presented with a set of specialized questions given as form fields. You are required to populate each form field with your data.

This Business Requirement Template is broken down into four areas:

  1. Requirement identification
  2. Requirement analysis
  3. Requirement documentation
  4. Ongoing requirement management

At the end of each stage, your supervisor/manager will review your work using Process Street’s approvals feature. The resulting information is then used to make system improvements. The best way to apply the results will depend on the nature of the system.

Features used in this template include: 

  • Stop tasks – To ensure task order.
  • Dynamic due dates – To make sure your initiative is reviewed on time.
  • Role assignments – To delegate tasks within your team ensuring your supervisors are appropriately assigned to the review tasks.
  • Approvals – Tasks can be accepted, rejected, and rejected with comments.

Record checklist details

In this Business Requirements Template process, you will be presented with the following form fields for which you are required to populate with your specific data. More information for each form field is provided via linkage to our help pages:

Let’s start by recording your details, the details of your supervisor or manager

This is a stop task, meaning you cannot progress in this template until the required form fields are populated.

Business details


Your details


Details of Manager/Supervisor


Checklist details

Once set, the due date for this Business Requirements Template will be used to set a dynamic due date, notifying your manager for the needed approval when required.

Requirements identification:

Identify your team

To effectively execute your business requirements plan, you need a strong team to support you.

Formulate your team. You can use the long-text form field below to document the team members.

Determine how you will identify requirements

Use your team to facilitate the identification of customer requirements.

There are various ways you can do this, discuss in your team your best options, and select from the multiple-choice question below which option you have chosen.

This step utilizes the conditional logic feature. You will be directed to the relevant stage in this template depending on the option/s selected.

  • 1

    Interview with relevant stakeholders
  • 2

    Focus groups
  • 3

    Workshops
  • 4

    Group creativity techniques
  • 5

    Surveys and questionarires
  • 6

    Product prototypes (products only)

Conduct interviews with relevant stakeholders

Use the long-text form field below to identify the relevant stakeholders, that is, those who will be impacted by your product, service, or project plan.

On identifying these stakeholders, arrange interviews to gauge their needs. This information will be used to build your product/service/project requirements.

With your team, discuss how you will conduct these interviews. Refer to the interview guide detailed below, which details best interview practices

You can use our file upload form field below to upload your interview transcript. Alternatively, for online documentation, enter the transcript URL in the URL form field below.

Identify key stakeholders with whom you are to conduct these interviews. Use the long-text form field to summarize these stakeholders.

Determine how these interviews will be conductedface-to-face, by telephone, etc. Use the long-text form field below to detail how you will conduct the interviews.

Run focus groups

Focus groups are a great way to determine how receptive key stakeholders will be to your product, service, or project

Follow the below steps to run your focus group:

  • 1

    Choose your topic of discussion
  • 2

    Choose your questions or discussion prompts
  • 3

    Prepare your focus group questionnaire
  • 4

    Appoint a notetaker
  • 5

    Recruit and schedule participants
  • 6

    Get consent and start the discussion
  • 7

    Have everyone introduce themselves
  • 8

    Ask your questions
  • 9

    Seek equal representation from the group
  • 10

    End the meeting in a reasonable amount of time
  • 11

    Analyze and incorporate feedback

A focus group is a small group of people, who typically represent your target market. You run ideas and questions about the product, service, or project to this group to obtain a stronger understanding of how the subject of the focus group would be received by a wider audience.

Run workshops

Planning an effective workshop takes organization, focus, and creativity.

Running workshops with key stakeholders can be used to communicate key concepts, demonstrate ideas, and encourage practice/adoption of a new product/service/project.

To run a workshop follow the below steps:

  • 1

    Define the goals
  • 2

    Decide who will attend
  • 3

    Choose the right location
  • 4

    Create an agenda
  • 5

    Develop a follow-up plan

During a workshop, participants may become dis-engaged, adopt the following strategies to help engage workshop participants.

  • 1

    Keep group sizes small. Some attendees might be nervous speaking up in larger groups
  • 2

    Mix different groups with different types of people in each group
  • 3

    Determine how you will record the ideas from each group
  • 4

    If you have 5 or fewer groups, spend time allowing the entire team to evaluate the ideas from each smaller group

Take the time to create fun and interesting group exercises.

Support group creativity techniques

To identify your requirements, it’s a good idea to encourage group creativity promoting innovation and new ways of thinking. This will increase the likelihood of covering all bases, ensuring requirements are met.

Follow the below steps to support group creativity:

  • 1

    Set an ambitious deadline for a project
  • 2

    Define the problem as a challenge that tests current assumptions about what is possible
  • 3

    Encourage debate
  • 4

    Reframe the debate as a positive, vital part of any problem solving activity
  • 5

    Foster productivity

Produce and hand-out surveys

Surveys are great tools when you want to understand how customers perceive your new product/service/project idea.

With surveys, you can gather qualitative and emotional feedback quickly.

Follow the below subtask form field to help guide you in the creation of your survey questions:

  • 1

    Write simple questions
  • 2

    Use words that have a clear meaning
  • 3

    Limit the number of ranking options
  • 4

    In multiple-choice questions, cover all options without overlapping
  • 5

    Avoid double-barreled questions
  • 6

    Offer an “out” for questions that don’t apply
  • 7

    Avoid offering too few or too many options
  • 8

    Make recall easy

Once you have created your survey, you can upload a copy or a link to online documentation using the form fields below:

Create a product prototype (products only)

Through the use of prototypes, you can provide proof of product viability and aesthetics; with information on production techniques, materials, and costs.

Follow the below subtask as a guide to assist you in building your product/service/project prototype:

  • 1

    Define the goals of the project
  • 2

    Define your competition
  • 3

    Define what type of product it is
  • 4

    Define how the product is to be used
  • 5

    Define visual precedence
  • 6

    Define deliverables
  • 7

    Draw your prototype

A prototype is an early model of your product, service, or project used to develop aspects of the actual finished product.

Identify your requirements

From your research, you should have obtained valuable information enabling you to identify the requirements of your product/service or project.

Use the long-text form field below to detail the requirements identified:

Requirements analysis:

Determine the work activities that correspond to the given requirement

You identified the following requirements for your product/service/project:

Identified requirements: {{form.Requirements_identified}}

With your team, take the time to determine the work activities that correspond to a particular requirement. Use the long-text form field below to detail these work activities:

Determine requirement accountability

Next, work through the identified requirements to determine requirement accountability.

That is, what team member/s is in charge of ensuring a requirement is achieved?

Use the long-text form field below to detail the requirement plus the team member/s accountable.

{{form.Requirements_identified}}

Determine requirement priority

From the requirements identified, assess requirement priority. Asking the question: What requirement is most important?

Use the long-text form field to list requirements in order of priority:

{{form.Requirements_identified}}

Decipher metrics and acceptance criteria

You need to define metrics and assessment criteria for all requirements to provide a baseline for understanding when a requirement has been fulfilled to an acceptable level.

Use the long-text form field below to define the metrics and assessment criteria you intend to use for each requirement.

{{form.Requirements_identified}}

Requirements Documentation:

View your business requirements report notes

View your business requirements report notes. These can be transcribed into a business requirement document.

These notes need approval from your manager before you can move forward and transcribe these notes into a final business requirements report.

Business requirements report notes

Your team: {{form.Team}}

Requirement identified: {{form.Requirements_identified}}

Work activities: {{form.Work_activities}}

Requirements and who is accountable: {{form.Requirement_+_accountability}}

Requirements in order of priority: {{form.Requirement_priority}}

Requirements and assessment critiera: {{form.Metrics_and_assessment_criteria}}

Approval: Managerial approval

Will be submitted for approval:

  • View your business requirements report notes

    Will be submitted

Document requirements in a Business Requirements Document

Use your business requirements report notes to produce your final business requirements report.

Use the file upload form field or the website form field to add such documentation to this checklist.

Check out the business requirement example skeleton provided below for clarity over how you should format your business requirements document.

Decide on methodology to be used to track and report on the status of each requirement

During the implementation of the proposed new project, service, system, software or product, it is important to devise a methodology that the accountable person can use to track and report the status of each requirement.

Devise and document this methodology for each requirement. Use the file upload or website form field to add such documentation to this checklist.

Create a project requirements checklist

Create a checklist to detail all requirements along with the associated metric measures.

This will ensure all requirements are completed before the formal implementation of a new product/service/project. 

You can create a checklist just like this one using Process Street.

For more information on how to do this, watch the below video: Basics of Creating and Editing Checklists.

You can create your checklist to contain an approval step, meaning the relevant personnel can sign off product/service/project completion when all requirements have been met.

Also our role assignment feature can be used to assign the relevant team member to the requirement.

Manage change in your organization

As you introduce a new project/product/system/service or software into your organization, you are in essence introducing change.

This change needs to be managed appropriatly.

At Process Street we have a range of change management processes you can follow to help you manage and deal with change.

9 Free Templates for a Successful Change Management Plan

Ongoing requirement management:

Ensure ongoing reporting on requirement status

As your new product/service/system/software/project is underway, you need systems in place that will continually report on requirement status.

Use this time to implement such systems, and communicate the requirement for ongoing reporting to your team.

  • 1

    Implement systems for ongoing reporting
  • 2

    Communicate the requirement for ongoing reporting to your team

Implement systems to raise awareness and concern

Situations may arise where requirements must be changed or altered in some way.

Make sure you have systems in place for team members to report issues or concerns regarding assigned requirements.

  • 1

    Establish systems for teams to report issues or concerns regarding assigned requirements

Ensure flexibility is introduced to change or alter requirements

As the new service/product/project etc, is implemented, sometimes you may need to alter requirements and the associated metrics.

Remain flexible in terms of your requirements and associated metrics, altering them when appropriate.

Sources:

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