Requirements Documentation
Capture, categorise, and track the business, stakeholder, functional, and non-functional requirements essential for project success.
In this resource
§1 Purpose of Requirements Documentation
Requirements documentation describes how individual needs meet the business goals of the project. It provides the foundation for the WBS, schedule, cost, and quality plans.
A requirement is a condition or capability that must be met by a product, service, or result to satisfy a contract, specification, or other formally imposed document. During the planning phase, project teams gather raw needs from stakeholders and distil them into formal, testable statements.
- Business: High-level needs of the organisation (e.g., increase revenue).
- Stakeholder: Needs of specific groups (e.g., Marketing needs to publish easily).
- Functional: Specific behaviours the product must perform (e.g., process a credit card).
- Non-functional: Environmental conditions (e.g., security, performance, accessibility).
- Transition: Temporary capabilities needed to move from current state to future state (e.g., data migration, training).
§2 Blank Template
A standardised tabular format designed to capture, categorise, and verify every project requirement.
Ensure that every requirement has clear, objective Acceptance Criteria. A requirement that cannot be tested or verified is effectively useless during the quality assurance phase.
REQUIREMENTS DOCUMENTATION
| ID | Requirement | Stakeholder | Category | Priority | Acceptance Criteria | Test / Verification |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [B-01] | [Clear, concise requirement statement] | [Name/Role] | [Business] | [Must] | [Objective definition of done] | [Verification method] |
| [S-01] | [Clear, concise requirement statement] | [Name/Role] | [Stakeholder] | [Should] | [Objective definition of done] | [Verification method] |
| [F-01] | [Clear, concise requirement statement] | [Name/Role] | [Functional] | [Must] | [Objective definition of done] | [Verification method] |
| [N-01] | [Clear, concise requirement statement] | [Name/Role] | [Non-functional] | [Could] | [Objective definition of done] | [Verification method] |
| [T-01] | [Clear, concise requirement statement] | [Name/Role] | [Transition] | [Must] | [Objective definition of done] | [Verification method] |
§3 Worked Example: Mary's Consulting
A completed requirements document for a corporate website overhaul, demonstrating proper categorisation, prioritisation, and strict acceptance criteria.
Notice how high-level business goals (e.g., B-02: Reduce content update time) cascade down into specific functional and stakeholder requirements. The "Priority" column uses the MoSCoW method (Must, Should, Could, Won't) to guide scope management.
REQUIREMENTS DOCUMENTATION
| ID | Requirement | Stakeholder | Category | Priority | Acceptance Criteria | Test / Verification | Phase / Release |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B-01 | Increase qualified inbound leads (MQLs) by 25% within 12 months of launch. | Mary (Sponsor) | Business | Must | Marketing analytics report shows $\ge50$ MQLs/month averaged over months 10-12 post-launch. | Analytics review | Post-launch |
| B-02 | Reduce content-update cycle time from ~10 days to < 1 day. | Marketing Lead | Business | Must | Marketing can publish a new content page in < 1 business day end-to-end without IT involvement. | Demo + 30-day usage data | Launch |
| B-03 | Position the brand credibly for Fortune 500 buyers. | Mary (Sponsor) | Business | Must | F500 buyer survey score $\ge7.5/10$ within 6 months. | Buyer survey | Post-launch |
| S-01 | Marketing must be able to publish content without engineering involvement. | Marketing Lead | Stakeholder | Must | Editor role can create, preview, and publish a page using only the CMS UI. | User acceptance test | Build |
| S-02 | Sales must receive new web-form leads in the CRM within 5 minutes of submission. | Sales Lead | Stakeholder | Must | End-to-end test from form submit to CRM record completes in $\le5$ minutes for 100% of test cases. | Integration test | Build |
| S-03 | Consultants must be able to submit/update their bio and case studies through a self-service form. | Consultant Community | Stakeholder | Should | Form requires $\le5$ minutes to complete; submissions queue for editorial review. | Pilot with 10 consultants | Build |
| F-01 | Provide a Contact / Request-for-Proposal form capturing name, work email, company, role, and message. | Marketing Lead | Functional | Must | All fields validated; submission stored and routed to CRM; thank-you confirmation displayed. | Functional test | Build |
| F-02 | Display a searchable case-study library filterable by industry, service, and region. | Marketing Lead | Functional | Must | $\ge20$ case studies at launch; filters return expected results for all combinations. | Functional test | Build |
| F-03 | Provide a consultant directory searchable by industry, region, and language. | Marketing Lead | Functional | Should | All 500+ consultant bios appear; search returns expected results for all filters. | Functional test | Build |
| F-04 | Provide a blog with categories, tags, author pages, and RSS feed. | Marketing Lead | Functional | Should | Editor can create, categorise, and tag posts; RSS feed validates. | Functional test | Build |
| F-05 | Integrate the contact and RFP forms with the company CRM via documented API. | Sales Lead | Functional | Must | Lead records created in CRM with source-tracking fields populated; failures logged and retried. | Integration test | Build |
| N-01 | All public pages must load in < 3 seconds on standard broadband (LCP < 2.5s). | Mary (Sponsor) | Non-functional | Must | 75th-percentile LCP < 2.5s in pre-launch performance test. | Performance test (Lighthouse / WebPageTest) | Test |
| N-02 | Site must achieve WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility compliance. | Legal / Compliance | Non-functional | Must | Third-party WCAG audit pass with zero Severity-1 findings. | Third-party accessibility audit | Test |
| N-03 | Site must be responsive across desktop, tablet, and mobile (≥320px width). | Bill (UX) | Non-functional | Must | Visual review on top 5 device sizes shows no broken layouts or hidden content. | Visual / responsive test | Test |
| N-04 | Site must remain available with 99.5% uptime SLA (monthly). | IT / Hosting Ops | Non-functional | Should | Hosting vendor contract specifies ≥ 99.5% SLA; monitoring confirms compliance. | SLA review | Operate |
| N-05 | Site must comply with GDPR data privacy requirements. | Legal / Compliance | Non-functional | Must | Cookie consent, data subject rights, and privacy policy reviewed and approved by Legal. | Legal review | Test |
| T-01 | Migrate existing case-study content from the legacy site to the new CMS. | Marketing Lead | Transition | Must | 100% of case studies migrated with formatting verified by Marketing. | Content audit | Launch |
| T-02 | Train Marketing team to use the new CMS. | Marketing Lead | Transition | Should | ≥ 1 four-hour training session held; quick-reference guide delivered. | Training records | Launch |
Testability is Mandatory
Notice that every requirement has a specific, measurable acceptance criterion. For example, "load quickly" (subjective) is translated to "LCP < 2.5s" (objective and testable).
Requirement Prefixing
Using categorical prefixes (e.g., B-01 for Business, F-03 for Functional) ensures that downstream documents like the Requirements Traceability Matrix remain highly organised.
Transition Requirements
Don't forget the temporary work required to move to the new system. Migrating legacy data (T-01) and training staff (T-02) are critical requirements that disappear once the project closes.