BRD
A business requirements document that opens with the decision being asked for, then makes the case behind it: the problem in business terms, the options including doing nothing, what each is worth, what it costs, and who has to agree. Nothing in it is invented — gaps come back as gaps.
- Asks for
- The decision you need, and who makes it
- The problem in business terms, and anything you know about its size
- Your numbers, where you have them — cost, revenue, volumes
- Gives back
- The ask on page one: what, from whom, by when
- The problem, stated in business rather than product terms
- Options including doing nothing, each with what it is worth and what it costs
- Assumptions flagged as assumptions, and who has to agree
- Plan
- Pro and Max
- Use next
- PRD, One-pager, Market size, FRD
What it gives you
1. The decision asked for Approve two engineers for one quarter to build CSV import. Decision: 14 Nov. 3. Options A Do nothing. Cost £0. 31% of trials stall at the empty-backlog step. B CSV import only. ~1 quarter, 2 engineers. Removes the stall for 8 of 10 trials. C Full Jira sync. ~3 quarters. Serves 2 of 10 trials that B does not. 6. Assumptions The 31% figure is from product analytics, Sep–Oct. Conversion uplift is an assumption, not a measurement. Flagged.
How it works
A BRD exists to get a yes or a no from somebody who will not read twelve pages. So the ask goes first — what you want agreed, by whom, by when — and the case follows for the people who need it. A document that builds to its conclusion on page nine is a document that gets skimmed to page two and decided on vibes.
The case itself has to include the option you do not want. A BRD with one option is a proposal wearing a document’s clothes, and the first question from anyone senior is what else you considered. Doing nothing is always one of them, costed, because quite often it wins and that is a real answer.
And it holds the line on numbers. Anything financial is either yours, with its source noted, or it is an explicit assumption flagged as one. A BRD that quietly contains a plausible invented figure is worse than one with a hole in it, because the hole gets filled and the invention gets quoted.
Who it is for
A PM who needs sign-off, funding or a decision from people outside the product team, and has to write the document that gets it.
Where it stops
It writes the case from what you give it and will not supply the business numbers you are missing — a BRD built on figures nobody has is a confident document about nothing. It also cannot do the politics: knowing who really has to agree, and in what order, is yours.
Questions people ask
What goes in a BRD that does not go in a PRD?
The argument. A BRD is about whether to do the thing: the problem in business terms, the options including doing nothing, what each is worth, what it costs, who has to agree. A PRD assumes that decision has been made and says what people will be able to do as a result. Mixing them produces a long document that neither persuades an executive nor tells an engineer anything they can build.
Why does it insist on including a do-nothing option?
Because the cost of doing nothing is the only honest baseline, and because a document with one option is a proposal rather than a case. Writing it down also forces a number onto the status quo — how many trials stall, what the support load is — and quite often that number is the strongest part of the argument. Occasionally it shows that doing nothing wins, which is an uncomfortable but genuinely useful outcome.
What happens if I do not have the financial numbers?
The document says so. Any figure you did not supply is either absent or written as an explicit assumption with a label on it, never presented as a finding. That is the one rule this tool does not bend: an invented number in a business case reads identically to a researched one a month later, and somebody will put it in a board pack. A flagged gap can be filled; a quiet invention cannot be found.
Run it on your own work
BRD needs an account, because it writes against what you give it and remembers what you have told it before. It is part of Pro and Max. Or see what the plans cost first.