[Techies Talk] How to write good Business Requirement document? Ready to use BRD template to prevent Scope Creep following best of Togaf.

[Anjani kumar]

Note:-  * This document is not yet complete and being modified so please ignore brevity and incompleteness.

Motivation:-

For small projects BRD and Functional specs  are often very simple and can be created easily with any specific readable format.
While currently used  BRD and definition can be found at below links
http://www.isixsigma.com/implementation/project-selection-tracking/business-requirements-document-high-level-review/

This writeup extends the BRD creation while mixing the traditional methods with the processes of Togaf.

This is meant for the scenarios  when we have to deal with large number of stakeholders and have to cater to gathering requirement dealing with multiple business scenario's?

Think about a complete team sitting and setting up workshops with different stack holders and their team to understand requirement that caters to:-

• Large number of stakeholders.
• Handles complex information and Process flow.
• Keep track of all concerns with view points? 
• Ensure's that you deliver what you sighn off, still not annoying the client.
• Get away from scope creeps, missing requiremnets and unknown expectaions which where never viable in the current constraints?

What a BRD should contain?

Ideally a BRD should contain
http://www.isixsigma.com/implementation/project-selection-tracking/business-requirements-document-high-level-review/

But this is not the end of the world and need mastery.
How about if most of the documentation is based on simple principle of separtion of concern and still supports contravariance and covariance so that it can be traceable from bottom to top and top to bottom.
contains all that are needed to deliver as signedof.
Has scope of multiple people working on requirement still not affecting the centralize BRD.
Once the requrement gathering and analysis is complete this is all linked back to BRD without and fuss.
The CRUX of all goes to SOW and details goes in to Functional Requiremnet Document.
If you try reading some of the article below you will be able to understand how important the below sections are in BRD and if they are not managed well they may Blast off to nothing.

http://pubs.opengroup.org/architecture/togaf9-doc/arch/chap26.html
http://pubs.opengroup.org/architecture/togaf9-doc/arch/chap27.html

Major sections of the proposed BRD where the sections can be easily extended or intentionally left balnk based on scope and requirement for such document.

Section		SubSection	Column2	Header	Description
0		1		Heading
0		2		Index
1		0		Executive Summary
2		0		Version Management
3		0		Approvals Reviews & Sighnoff
4		0		Link to  Signed SOW
4		0		Client Details
5		0		Stake Holders
6		0		Stake Holder Power Grid
7		0		Buisness Scenario
10		0		Stake holder concerns and view point
11		0		Buisness Objectives
12		0		View points to View Catalog
13		0		Views to Process Catalog
14		0		Process and Enviornment Matrix
15		0		Gap Analysis Existing/Purposed Processes
16		0		Actors
17		0		Functionality to Process Catalog
19		0		Information Flow
20		0		Data Source Matrix
21		0		Data Dictionary
22		0		Buisness Rule Catalog
23		0		Technology
24		0		Limitations Feasibilty/Viability Analysis
25		0		Risk
25		0		Assumption's
26		0		Support Process Post Launch

               27                           0             Glosarry

As the BRD will contain multiple Catalogs so multiple checklist/matrix/grids/documents are needed to support it.
Some of them would be:-
1.  Base BRD
2.  Functional Specification

Area	Section	Sub Section	Column2	Header	Description
	1	0		Heading
	2	0		Associated Processes
	3	0		Index
	4	0		Executive Summary
	5	0		Version Management
	6	0		Approvals Reviews & Sighnoff
	7	0		Link to  BRD
Function
	8	0		Actors Power Grid
	9	0		Use Case
	10	0		User Interface
	11			States
Data
	12	0		Data Entities and Attributes
	13	0		RelationShips
	14	0		Information flow back link
	15	0		Data dictionary back link
	16	0		Assumptions
	17	0		Risk's
	18	0		Glossary

3.  Stake holder Grid
4.  Stake holder and Their Concerns
5.  Concerns and View points
6.  Data Dictionary
7. Gap Analysis
8. Views
9. Business Process
10.Smart buisness objective

--
Posted By Anjani kumar to Techies Talk at 4/16/2013 05:11:00 AM