Understanding the Objectives of a Business Requirements Document


To get what we want, we need to accurately define it. Business requirements are the critical activities of an enterprise that must be performed to meet the organizational objectives while remaining solution independent.

Here are some common questions which might ring a bell in you. Has a client ever told you that the product delivered is not performing as requested? Was there a change in the deliverable after beginning to build the product? Has there been a difference of opinion about end results from multiple stakeholders? Has there been new requirements requested after the product has been built?

Preparing a good business requirements document is the first step towards minimizing these risky situations and uncertainties during a project life cycle. Documents are created to assist different project needs and ensuring the product is built in the way the client thinks it should be. The basic objective of these documents will be to properly communicate and finalize the requirements gathered from the business stakeholders in order to avoid future changes. This document is usually a detailed one and requires a lot of input to serve its purpose. Documentation is one of the integral job functions of a business analyst.

What is a Business Requirement Document?


Business Requirements Document (BRD) is an integrated document which details the business solution for project requirements in order to gain value in the project. This document is important since it is the foundation of the entire life cycle of the project with the project management and the implementation team.

BRD will mainly emphasize on what should be the end result and it doesn’t bother how the objective is achieved.

In case, of a new request for a change/modification of existing software arises, a new BRD should be created. The BRD describes what the system would look like from a business perspective. The BRD will contain both the business solution and the technical solution. When examining the business solution, the BRD should answer the question, “What is the need for the business?” and while examining the technical solution, it should answer the question, “How is it going to be delivered”. It also contains a prioritized list of features and business requirements that the delivered software must provide.

What is the Purpose of a BRD?

The purpose of the Business requirements document is to describe the steps to be followed to obtain the end solution for the customers and stakeholders for the product, system, or service that was requested. The BRD will detail all of the existing business state and what the business owners are planning to change in the future which will provide a focused future movement of the business. The team which will be involved for the documentation process will be the project team and the functional groups who determine how to implement the delivery to meet the business requirements. The team will be responsible for determining how to develop, what the Business has requested. All of the stakeholders who will be involved during the documentation process should have agreed at common points before the project begins.

We should make all the teams involved to understand the objectives and include it in any communication you have with anyone about the application. You must always be proactively reconfirming the objectives with the stakeholders and customers whenever there is a misconception about the project requirements.

Objectives of a BRDh2

BRD can be described as a mode of communication in completion of a project and the main goal of the document is to deliver caliber by taking into consideration, the inputs and outputs from each project phase, the functional and non-functional system specifications to achieve the desired objective.

A BRD makes a clear eminence between the business objective and the technical objective. The business objective should answer the question about “What is the organization’s goal?”

The technical objective focuses on the provision of a solid basis on which the business objective can be met. In this context, the most common objectives of a BRD can be summarized as follows:

  • Provide an overview of the business needs and the reasons for initiating the project
  • To provide a suitable and feasible solution to meet the customer/business needs.
  • To be universally accepted by the stakeholders, users and project managers.
  • To provide a detailed description of what customer/business needs will be met by the software solution.
  • It should contain more business requirements rather than technical requirements.
  • Communication to vendors about what is expected to be delivered by the solution designed.
  • Should have a logical flow providing the basis for all subsequent project deliverable.
  • To describe what not how the customer/business needs will be met by the solution

It is important to understand the objectives behind the documenting of a BRD in order to provide a strong foundation for your project, giving it a better chance of success.

Writing a good Business Requirements Document is a vital element to overall project success and it ensures that the project is driven by true customer needs and to lower the costs of the project. A good BRD will also make relative priorities of features or functionality clear.

karthikeya Boyini
karthikeya Boyini

I love programming (: That's all I know

Updated on: 28-Apr-2022

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