Business Requirements Vs Functional Requirements

 

Business Requirements Vs Functional Requirements: 

Everything done in business is aiming at making the business more profitable. But the issue is not having many projects and activities in a business, and instead of; a business has to conduct only the projects and activities that it actually needs. 

In a science of business management known as Business Intelligence (BI); everything is under control. However, there are some concepts are still confusing in this scope. Business Requirements and Functional Requirements are still confusing simply because they are very closely related to each other but they are not actually the same.

“Our customers will get a free delivery for each purchase” and “We need to offer our customers a free delivery”. These two statements look alike but also different. The first statement shows the implementation or action while second statement shows the suggestion or opinion.

What is Business requirements ? It is what define or describe a business needs. Business requirements states why a project is needed ? Whom it will benefit ? When and where it will take place ?. But Business requirements do not define how the project is to be implemented. Therefore, the second statement is a business requirements which shows what a business need. The business requirements changes less and are typically objectives.

And what is Functional Requirements ? Describe the functionalities, capabilities and activities a business must be able to perform and specify the overall behavior of the business to be developed. Now you know what a first statement is.

These two concepts need to be understood well because failure in understanding them, you might find the Business doing things which actually kill the business and not improving it.

Also by understanding the business requirements, your business can be able to develop unique projects which will beat your competitors easily. The problem of not understanding business requirements, lead to copy and paste others' marketing strategies without knowing whether their business needs them or not.

What are the good Business Requirements ?

As good requirements states something which is necessary, verifiable and attainable.  However, business requirements should be more necessary just because, even if it is attainable and verified but not necessary, then it is not a good business requirement. There are some guidelines to follow for preparing the good Business Requirements;

 Use of Business Model

Business Model is very useful and highly recommended in your business due to its potential of showing all the business scheme in a diagram wise. Then, you shouldn’t sit down and start thinking about your business requirements, but see on business model what actually your business needs ? If you just sit and try to think about the requirements, you will end up preparing requirements which are either unnecessary, unverified or unattainable.

Flow downstream

This means that, the requirements can take your business into the next stage. Don’t write down requirements which will work today and end up today, what about tomorrow ? You need business requirements which can take you more further. This problem of having requirements which fail to take a business into the next stage, is due to a business and your team of not being creative and updated in a market scope.

Clarity, verified, necessary and attainable

A good business requirement should be clear so that one doesn’t needs several hours to understand what is it all about. If the business requirement is clear, then it is easy to verify it. But don’t miss this part; does that requirement necessary ? Even though it is clear and verified, but must be necessary. When requirement has all those properties, then you need to know its accessibility status, can you attain it ? Never put assumptions when preparing the business requirements.

Explore all the sources

Here sources mean that, every point of your business which can provide information about a business needs. Don’t focus on a single source, I see a lot of people prefer much to focus on customers and clients and let all other sources. Sometimes your business needs stakeholders amendments, make sure you explore to all sources.

Know how you can measure its performance

Back into KPIs, as I did elaborate in my article of “KPIs in Business” you are highly required to use KPIs in your business. It’s fine, your business reveals that it needs a certain requirement, but how will you know that, the methods you shall use, will  make that requirement achievable ? You need to have KPI for that. So when you are writing the Business requirements, put KPIs into consideration.

Good business requirements are easy to achieve business goals and making a business growing positively. Also good business requirements are to make sure that, you spend money and time for only things which work and assuming.