A guide to creating a BRD (business requirement document) template

Have you ever looked at a BRD (business requirement document) template and wondered what purpose it serves? Keeping project stakeholders aligned is important for achieving business objectives. That’s why a clear executive summary stating everything that needs to be done is key for all successful projects. It serves as an anchor, grounding everyone involved in the project and preventing them from wandering astray from set goals.

In this article, you’ll learn what exactly a business requirement document is, why you might want to use one, and what to include in it. We’ll also explore how to use monday.com templates for managing business objectives.

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What is a business requirement document?

A business requirement document (or BRD) is a formal document that clearly articulates specific business goals or project objectives. A well-crafted BRD serves as a shared point of reference for all stakeholders involved in a project. It also provides a detailed roadmap for how the business process or project will be executed. BRDs are often used in the software development process, and they help ensure everyone involved understands the project objectives and agrees on the scope of work.

Business requirement documents, or BRDs, can be created for a wide variety of projects, from small internal initiatives to large-scale system implementations. No matter the size or complexity of the project, a well-written BRD helps to ensure its success.

Let’s see how.

Why use BRD (business requirement document) templates?

Using a BRD template to clarify business or project requirements is not only advantageous — it’s often downright necessary. Here’s how you’ll benefit from using one:

• Keeping stakeholders aligned on project objectives: When everyone has a clear understanding of project requirements, their activities remain aligned without the constant need for consultation.
• Reducing errors: Having a roadmap from the get-go reduces confusion and fewer misunderstandings or mistakes occur.
• Increasing reliability and flexibility: When project stakeholders are operating according to an executive summary, the results of their work will be more reliable, yet they can enjoy more flexibility about how they get things done. As long as they stay within the parameters of the BRD template, the rest is up to them.
• Cost efficiency: By using a BRD template to enhance project management, you can save money by not making frequent mistakes or going off track.
• Increasing independence: It reduces dependency on external consultants or business analysts and allows you to employ any business process that suits your needs. Individual stakeholders can also enjoy increased independence within the parameters of project requirements.
• Transparency and accountability: With everything clearly laid out, the process will be transparent and workplace accountability will be easily traceable. If things go wrong, you can refer to your BRD to see who was responsible for the mishaps, gaining insight into avoiding future errors.

So, now that we’ve explored how beneficial using a business requirement document can be, let’s explore what you should include in your own BRD template.

What are some examples of BRD (business requirement document) templates?

Before filling out your BRD template, it’s important to know what exactly to include in it. Let’s explore each item individually.

A needs statement

This is where you make your case for the necessity of the project. Provide a rationale to garner support from stakeholders and employees. A needs statement is your opportunity to do that and win support from them before getting started with the project.

Cost-benefit analysis

A cost-benefit analysis is an important tool for business decision-makers. It helps to identify and quantify expected costs and benefits of a proposed course of action, and provides a basis for comparison between multiple options. By taking the financial and non-financial impacts of a decision into consideration, a cost-benefit analysis helps ensure the best option is chosen objectively. Furthermore, a cost-benefit analysis helps assess the risks and potential rewards of investment. All in all, it’s a pretty essential part of the overall BRD.

Scope statement

This part of the document describes the project scope, including a list of specific project goals, deliverables, tasks, costs, and deadlines. It clarifies the boundaries of the project, establishes responsibilities for each person involved, and outlines procedures for how completed work gets approved. During the project, the scope statement helps the team stay focused. It also provides them with guidelines for implementing changes along the way. Large projects often change as they progress. If a project has been properly “scoped” at the beginning, then managing changes will be significantly simpler.

Project objectives

This section outlines what you plan to have achieved by the end of your project. What is the team’s main goal? Project objectives can often be set and measured numerically. For example, if your project is to improve customer satisfaction with your products or services, this could be measured by the number and quality of customer reviews.

Project requirements

This section should outline everything the project needs to be successful. This should include high-level and technical requirements. You can choose how much detail to go into about requirements, but the more specific you are about where resources are coming from and how they’ll be used, the more streamlined the process will be later.

Project stakeholders

This is where you list the key stakeholders involved in the project and lay out their duties. Everyone should have a clear understanding of which aspects of the project fall into their realm of responsibility.

Project schedule and deadlines

While some projects are more time-specific than others, every project should have a schedule and a deadline. Putting a clear time frame on tasks will help avoid unnecessary delays and contribute to overall project success.

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Business requirement documents (BRDs) on monday.com

monday.com is a Work OS that helps teams organize, manage, and complete their work, it offers a variety of features and benefits that make it an essential tool for any team.

One of the most important features of monday.com is its ability to help teams track their work and progress. With its visual interface, teams can see exactly what needs to be done and who is responsible for each task.

Our feature-rich Single Project Template can easily build on your BRD (business requirement document) template. It can be used to:

• Set milestones and project deadlines
• Organize tasks between stakeholders
• Categorize tasks based on priority

With many customizable columns and views, you can create multi-layered visual displays of projects. You can sync calendars and instantly share documents between users. It integrates with:

• Gmail
• Jira
• Google Drive
• Dropbox
• Excel
• Google Calendar

For every facet of a regular BRD, there’s a feature on our Single Project Template to match it and support it.

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Related templates on monday.com

Aside from the core aspects of projects, there are often extraneous variables of events that might need to be managed outside of the central project template. For example, projects often require tweaks and changes along the way. As mentioned in an earlier section, setting up an approval procedure is necessary for making such changes and ensuring all stakeholders agree. To do that, you can take advantage of our Project Requests and Approval Template.

Project Requests and Approval Template

To ensure that the process of approving change goes smoothly, this template serves as the perfect request form. You can state the name of the person requesting a change, the date of the request, and include background details on the nature of the requested change. Instead of having to notify each stakeholder individually, you can automatically notify them of the change request and the deadline for approval.

Additionally, being easily integrated with SurveyMonkey, you can set up a poll or voting system so that stakeholders can vote on whether a request is approved or denied.

Frequently asked questions

What is a BRD?

A business requirement document (or BRD) is a formal document that describes the objectives that a business needs to achieve for its respective projects. It’s typically used in the software development process to communicate between the business stakeholders, but can be used for all project types. The BRD should be clear, concise, and complete so that everyone involved understands what’s required of them. It should include project scope, a cost-benefit analysis, a list of project stakeholders and their responsibilities, and deadlines.

How do I write a business requirement document (BRD)?

Define the reasons for the project, the scope of the project, who will be involved, and what the project requirements are. You can use monday.com templates to help frame your BRD and get your project started on the right foot.

Aligning project elements toward success

There are a few core documents in business that serve as the central point for all types of project actions — a BRD is one of them. It helps you to align everyone involved in the project on objectives and goals, orienting the overall machine in the right direction. If a project is like a computer, then the BRD can be seen as the operating system running it. It’s the set of rules and parameters that dictate how and when processes happen. monday.com is a feature-dense cloud-based workspace with templates you can use for your BRD (business requirement document) template.