Start with people, responsibilities, and outcomes.
List each user type and what that person must accomplish. Owners, managers, staff, customers, and vendors often need different views and permissions.
For each workflow, define the operational outcome: faster intake, fewer missed handoffs, cleaner reporting, less duplicate entry, or better customer visibility.
- User roles and responsibilities
- Business owner and project sponsor
- Decisions the system must support
- First-release success criteria
Document the workflow and its exceptions.
Describe the trigger, required information, statuses, handoffs, reminders, approvals, and completion condition. Then document what happens when information is missing, duplicated, rejected, delayed, or changed.
Real operations contain exceptions. Ignoring them during requirements work simply pushes those decisions into development or production.
Define data, permissions, integrations, and reporting.
List the records the business needs, where current data lives, who may view or edit it, and which reports use it. Identify systems that may connect and who controls those accounts.
Do not assume a provider supports the desired integration. Record API access, exports, webhooks, account plan, approval requirements, and fallback options as discovery items.
Set release boundaries and ownership.
Separate required first-release capability from later opportunities. Define migration, training, documentation, hosting, backups, vendor accounts, support, and who approves production changes.
These operational requirements prevent custom software from becoming unsupported code after launch.