Introduction to

Business
Requirements
This class
• Defining business requirements
• Developing a vision and scope
• Vision and Scope document
• Thinking from the business perspective
• Introduce IA1: Business Requirements

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QUICK REVIEW

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Last class
• Types of requirements
• Requirements Development process
• Definition and terms to know

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Requirements are important
• Requirements are the customer’s needs and wants
for what should be included in the product
• Requirements are CRITICAL to business!
• Without clear requirements, we can’t understand
the specifics of the solution we are trying to build
• Documenting requirements is an investment of time
and resources, but leads to more successful
projects

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Requirements Classification Schema
High level
• Describe why the organization is implementing
Business the system – business goals and objectives
Requirements

• Describe the user needs that must be met

to achieve business requirements
User requirements

• Describe what the developers

Solution Requirements must implement in order to satisfy
Detailed user requirements
(Functional & Nonfunctional)

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Requirements Development process
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Collecting and discovering
Elicitation information

Confirming the
requirements with 4 2
the customer
Validation Analysis
Organizing your
information and
looking for
knowledge gaps
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Drafting your
requirements documents, Specification
models, and prototypes

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DEFINING BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS

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What are business requirements?
• Business requirements define the project goals
and objectives, and ways to measure whether
those goals were met

• Business requirements should be completed

before you move on to document user and
functional requirements

• Main two elements of business requirements are

vision and scope and these are documented in
the Vision and Scope Document

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Eliciting Business Requirements
• We begin eliciting business requirements early in the project, in a workshop with
the Customer Team

Requirements
Vision and
Project Kick- Elicitation Development Requirements
Scope
Off Meeting Planning Baseline
Workshop

Project Team Elicit Business Plan for how to Elicit Stakeholder Customer Team
discusses pain Requirements elicit Stakeholder and Solution signs of on
points and needs from Customer and Solution Requirements requirements.
at a high level Team Requirements Building may
begin.

We may also learn non-requirements things like

business rules, constraints, and solution ideas.

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 Product vision
• Vision describes the ultimate product that will
achieve the business objectives
o Describes what product is and what it could become

o Aligns all stakeholders in a common direction

o Provides context for decisions during product

lifecycle
o More long-term view, changes slowly over time

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 Project scope
• Scope identifies what portion of the vision
the current project or iteration will address
o The boundary for what’s in and what’s out for
the project
o Ensures all stakeholders understand
immediate needs
o Important to deal with client ‘needs’ before
addressing their ‘wants’

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Example
VISION:
A cloud-based application that lets virtual teams collaborate easily and
effectively. It should work on desktop and mobile devices and facilitate
meetings, document collaboration, and project planning.
SCOPE:
First release of product will include only the desktop experience. Functionality
will focus on document management basics (upload, download, edit). Virtual
teams must belong to the same company (no external members).

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Where do we get business requirements?
Business requirements typically come from people in senior leadership
positions within the company:

• Executive sponsor
• Stakeholders
• Marketing managers
• Product visionaries
• Etc.
BUT…
These stakeholders don’t always
agree on what the business
objectives and requirements
should be

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Why business requirements are important
 They help define vision and scope

o i.e. what’s our goal, and what can we achieve in this iteration

 They provide clear project direction

o Without clear project direction projects are more likely to fail

 They help keep projects within time and budget

o If new requirements are proposed by the customer, you can easily rule them out
if they don’t align to a business requirement (and therefore avoid scope creep)

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Business requirements help the BA
• As the customer requests changes or additional
requirements, we can easily exclude them from the project if
they do not align to our business requirements
o BUT you need to save all of these requests to be re-examined for a
future iteration of the product

• BA can display business objectives, vision, and scope

highlights in each elicitation session for easy reference
o This helps keep participants on track and on topic

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DEVELOPING A VISION AND SCOPE

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Let’s create a vision…
• Describe your idea of the perfect
beach resort!
o What buildings do we need?

o What services and amenities?

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Let’s scope our vision…
• Out of everything that you described in your vision, what parts of the resort
would need to be built first?
o Think of it like Phase 1 of our building plan.

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VISION AND SCOPE DOCUMENT

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What is the Vision and Scope Document?
• The Vision and Scope Document outlines all Standard Table of Contents
business requirements

• BA usually writes the document with input from

Executive Sponsor and senior stakeholders

• Executive Sponsor signs off on the document,

and then is the official owner of the document

• For a sample Vision and Scope Document,

see Appendix D in your textbook

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Working from a template
• Templates provide a consistent way to gather and organize
information
• Populate it as your go along, filling in what you know/ might
know
o Don’t need to fill in the document from top to bottom

o Empty sections highlight what you don’t know yet

• It’s ok to leave a section of the template blank if it doesn’t apply

o Provide an explanation for why it’s blank – don’t just leave it blank,
because you might look at it later and wonder why it’s blank

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What goes in the Vision and Scope Document?
The Vision and Scope Document typically has 3 sections:

1 2 3

Business Requirements Scope and Limitations Business Context

This section describes the This section describes This section describes the
primary benefits to the what features will be general readiness of the
business. (i.e. Vision) included in the project and customer for the product
which will not. (i.e. Scope) being built.

Let’s take a closer look at some components of Section 1: Business Requirements

(We will practice writing these in our workshop next class)

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THINKING FROM THE BUSINESS
PERSPECTIVE

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ACTIVITY: Think like a business
• Business requirements come from the business –
typically the Executive Sponsor or executive
stakeholders on our customer team
Executive
• So what are some things that the business would Sponsor

care about most?

Stakeholders

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Requirements from the Business’ perspective
• Regardless of the project and the solution we’re
building, there are some common things that
businesses care about as project outcomes:
o Increasing revenue/sales

o Increasing productivity or decreasing inefficiency

These form the basis
o Increasing customer or user satisfaction of Business Objectives

o Increasing customer or user retention

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Business Objectives
• Business objectives describe what outcome the business wants to accomplish, by
how much, and by when
• They must be measurable – include a Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

• They typically have a longer time frame of 1 year after product launch to meet the
objective
• Business objectives don’t always have to be financial
o E.g. Financial BO: Increase sales by $X per year within Y months.

o E.g. Non-financial BO: Achieve customer satisfaction rating of X% within Y months.

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Success Metrics
• Since we’re measuring our Business Objectives a year after the product launch, it
would be good to know earlier if we are on track to meeting them
• Success metrics are indicators of whether we are going to meet our business
objectives – think of them like milestones
• They are usually incremental, because we cannot determine a trend based on a
single data point – i.e. measure weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.

Product Time Business

launch Objective

SM SM SM SM

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ACTIVITY: Identify success metrics
• In small groups, can you think of some
incremental success metrics related to these
business objectives?
o Increasing revenue/sales

o Increasing productivity or decreasing inefficiency

o Increasing customer or user satisfaction

o Increasing customer or user retention

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Success Metrics and Business Objectives
• There are often several BUSINESS OBJECTIVES SUCCESS METRICS
metrics that can indicate Increase revenue/sales  Total sales per week or month
whether a business objective  Number of unique website visitors
will be reached
Increase customer  Satisfaction rating (%)
• Success Metrics can also be satisfaction  Number of new customers
an indicator for more than  Number of returning customers
one Business Objective  Time spent on the website per visit

Increase productivity  Time to complete a task

 # of clicks to complete a task

Increase customer  # of repeat customers

retention  # of new customers
 # of site visits per customer

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Business Risks
• Business risks are the negative things that could
happen to the business if:
o The customer goes through with the project, or

o The customer does not go through with the

project.
• NOTE: Business risks are not the same as
project risks
o Project risks are things like going over budget,
scope creep, failing to document requirements,
etc.

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Assumptions
• Assumptions are things we believe to be true that will affect our project’s
outcome
o They are called assumptions because we don’t have proof or specific knowledge
– they are educated guesses
• Assumptions are directly related to the business objective that you set – they
justify or substantiate the KPI
• Example: BO is to increase sales by 25% within 1 year of launch.
o Why 25% Where did that number come from?
• Assumption: New website will reach 200 unique users every month after launch.

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Dependencies
• Dependencies are factors that may affect our project, but they are not within
our control – they are external to the project
• Usually dependencies are related to third-party software or external systems
that are connecting to our solution
• Example:
o The calorie tracking iPhone app is dependent on being connected to an online nutritional
database.

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Summary
• Business Requirements are documented in the Vision and Scope
document.
• A product’s vision describes the ultimate product that will achieve
the business objectives.
• A product’s scope identifies what portion of the vision the current
project or iteration will address.
• The Vision and Scope document consists of 3 sections:

1. Business Requirements
2. Scope and Limitations
3. Business Context

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Kahoot

Test your knowledge

of Business
Requirements!

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INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT 1:
BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS

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IA2: Business Requirements
• In this assignment you will be asked to document business requirements as
the BA for an imaginary project of your choosing.
• You will write:
o 3 Business Objectives
Let’s look at the full
o 3 Success Metrics instructions on
eConestoga…
o 3 Business Risks

o 3 Assumptions/ Dependencies

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For next class
• Review the Instructional Plan

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