From Chaos to Clarity: structuring Business Requirement Documents (BRD) that deliver

In the fast-paced world of product development, clear communication is crucial for successful outcomes. One essential tool in the arsenal of product leaders is the Business Requirement Document (BRD).

A BRD is a comprehensive, formal document that outlines the needs, objectives, and requirements of a product/feature.

A well-structured BRD can mean the difference between a smooth product discovery, alignment, development and launch process. In this post, we’ll explore the key elements of a successful BRD and offer tips on how to structure them for optimal clarity and efficiency.

For the BRD to succeed, there are two critical starting points to define: (i) stakeholders: who are your internal partners that will help you clarify the needs to solve, and (ii) scope: delimit the clear deliverable that you will work on, and define future phases to work on after that. Focus.

Now, let’s talk about the document itself. The tool and its structure (i.e.: which sections I recommend including in the template):

• Context & opportunity (business case): in this section, you should answer the question ‘Why are we working on this initiative?’. Include numbers and a forecast for your development.
• Proposal: this section has to answer the question ‘How are we going to do this initiative?’. Propose the solution at a high level, identifying phases, and who will it apply to. Details will be clear in the user requirements.
• Risks: here the question to answer is ‘What could go wrong?’ . Think broadly, not only your product, think about company as a whole and Public Relations (PR) risks.
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs): Think backwards from your customer and stakeholders. What would be the set of questions they would ask, once they hear about this initiative. Write down as many as needed to complete the proposal.
• Metrics and success criteria: this section is about identifying what is the success criteria, and the tracking metrics — ‘What is the single metric that will give us confidence in stating this was a success?’. It will help the Tech team instrument the product/feature accordingly.
• User stories / Requirements: this section should have the most details of the document. It is made up of three sub-sections: (i) Personas: clearly state and define the actors in the product/feature — they will benefit from it or use it; (ii) Priorities: this will help the project management side of the role. Focus on the key deliverable, remove distractions. The ones I typically use are: Priority 0 (critical for launch), Priority 1 (could be done as a fast-follow), or Priority 2 (could be done in the future, if necessary); and (iii) User requirements: I typically write them in user story format as ‘As [persona], I want to…”.

When writing product requirements, focus on identifying needs. Be as comprehensive as possible. Be specific, but do not get into implementation details.

• Appendixes: Appendixes serves as support for your evidence in the main body (i.e.: previous sections). Add in there anything that supports the case, has helped you identify the needs or will provide additional insights into why, how and what we are building.

These is basically it. I have shared with you a comprehensive template I use as starting point. Every BRD is different, so feel free to modify as needed: some require extensive alignment (+50 stakeholders), others require a thorough business case, others just the requirement list, etc.