Table of Contents 

Project Vision 

Functional Requirements 

Non-Functional Requirements 

Competitor’s Analysis 

 
 

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Having an IT project manager involved in a project implies the opposite of what 
most business people are used to thinking. You may say: “Let’s start from the 
business analysis stage.”  

But why is this? And is it the best approach? This often occurs because business 
analysis in software development is not only about the business itself.   

The story below will help you to understand what I am talking about. 

Sam, the managing director at a San Francisco mall, was meeting with Oliver, the 
IT project manager at a software development company.  

“We are looking to build a smart parking solution for the mall.” 

1. The system should track available and occupied parking spaces and show 
users which spaces are available. 
2. Users should have a mobile app installed to search for available spaces, 
automatically charging them once they choose a suitable location. 

“As we’d like to launch it this year, let’s start the development process quickly. What 
kind of budget we should allocate for this solution?​” - Sam said. 

“That’s great, Sam. Should we outline requirements for the first rough version of a 
system, and we will start as soon as possible?​” - Oliver asked. 

“I just listed them all, didn’t I?”​ - Sam asked a bit astonished. 

You might think that this sounds impossible. But it doesn’t.  

It’s all based on a true story. We face such cases quite often—the absence of 
requirements influences the success of a software development project. 

Next comes the business analysis process in the context of designing the 
software product. It’s not only about the creation of initial documentation to 
launch software product development. 

The core benefit of this analysis is setting ongoing processes to update the 
documentation with new features during development.  

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Information technologies and business processes that change daily have a 
tangible effect on our everyday life. Just look at Netflix, Uber, and Airbnb, and we 
can see how each one’s industry underwent radical changes to their models in 
recent years. It’s reasonable to assume then that the r​ ise of digital BA​ i​ s 
inevitable.  

In this article, I will describe how a business analyst can add value to software 
development projects by getting a clear vision of a future software product and 
optimizing the development team’s workflow. 

Project Vision  
The first thing to start with is the creation of a project vision document. And 
while there are several different definitions available—​to our company, 
“project vision” means a general description of the product in the context 
of business goals.​ This 2-3 page document allows for a brief but substantial 
project overview. 

The process is as follows: the product owner describes their own vision and 
business goals of a future software product, and then a business analyst helps 
to structurize and complement these goals. 

All of the data included in the project vision should answer the following 
questions: 

1. What is the strategic intent of the software product? 

2. What problem(s) will the product solve? 
3. What benefit(s) will the product offer compared to competitor’s products? 
4. Who will use these benefits? 
5. How will the software product’s success be measured? 

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An example of the project vision document: 

Product Title 
MD Player Version 2.0 

Vision Statement 
MDPlayer is the best way of experiencing your favorite music on an Android 
device. 

● English and Russian interface 

● Simple gestures for easy navigation 
● Easy playlist management − from automated creation to custom playlists 
● Drive Mode − a pleasant bonus for drivers who listen to music in cars − bigger 
buttons, easier controls 
● Beautifully displayed cover artwork 
● MDPlayer is packed with all other goodies like shuffle, equalizer, widgets for 
Home screen and notification bar, and more 

Client’s Goal 
● Skills demonstration of the company’s personnel in order to attract new 
customers 
● Raise awareness of the company on the market of mobile application 
development 
● Provide Users' Support in the company 

Product Goal 
● Attract users from new countries' markets 
● Get more than 10 000 users while releasing Version 2.0 
● Become #1 app for Android Auto Users App 

Target Audience 
● Young people and teenagers 
● Music fans 
● Drivers who use mobile phones for listening to music in a car 

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 Competitors 

#  Competitor/Analog 

1  Google Play Music 

2  Poweramp 

3  Rocket Music Player 

Features List 

● Playback Tracks  ● Headphones Plug-In Action 

● Edit Mode  ● Playback Controls 
● Sort options  ● Track Info Tab 
● Folder/Playlist options  ● Car Mode 
● All Music, Genres, Artists, My  ● Notification in Notification Drawer 
Favorites and Most Played sections  ● Notification on the Lock screen 
● Playlist creation  ● Scanning tracks from SD-card 
● Music Library Settings  ● Android Wear supporting 
● Music folders, hidden from library  ● Android Auto supporting 
● Equalizer 
● Track Display Options 

Killer Features 
● Simple playlist management 
● Drive Mode. Adapted buttons and gestures to control the player while driving 
● Android Auto App 
● Gorgeous artwork 
● Powerful equalizer and beautiful widgets 

MVP Strategy  

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 ● This is an optional area which can describe minimal viable product goals and 
approaches 
● It can also be replaced with smth like Priorities block, which will describe 
what's most important in this product features list 
● This block is a must if we create an MVP, proof of concept, prototype, etc. 

Success Metrics  
● The app should be downloaded 2,000,000 times from Play Store before the 1st 
of December, 2019 

Project Restrictions 
● Don't work with cue files for this version 

Graphic Design 
● Style library or brand book should be attached if available 
● Examples of app's design that client like and dislike 

What may be achieved with a well-defined project vision: 

1. Fewer miscommunications 
2. Сlear vision of a future software product 
3. Determination of non-defined product features 
4. Documentation and structuring of product goals 
5. Creating the basis for ongoing planning of software architecture 
6. Helping all software development teams understand a project’s goals and 
strategy 
 
 
 
 
 

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Functional Requirements  
The second business analysis document after project vision is the functional 
requirements. Depending on the product goals, functional requirements can 
come in a variety of different formats. The most common ones include: 

● User stories and acceptance criteria 

● Use cases 
● Wireframes and sketches 
● BPMN models 
● UML diagrams 

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Functional requirements enable an understanding of how the software product 
will interact with its users. This section answers the question: “What will the 
software product do to meet user needs?”  

From our company’s experience, user stories are incredibly useful for most of 
our clients. They help to define user goals and business benefits altogether in 
one concise statement.  

User stories are short descriptions of the software product's functionality from 
the user's point of view. They consist of the following:  

"As a [...], I want to [...] so, that [...]." 

Here’s an example of a user story: 

As a user, I want to view all music available on the device in order to select and 
play it. 

Our functional requirements document contains: 

1. A set of user stories for each piece of functionality 

2. Acceptance criteria for each user story 
3. Visualizations for each user story 

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An example of the functional requirements document: 

User story/ or 

Acceptance Criteria  Visualization 
Feature/ or Screen 

● This screen is opened by 

As a user, I want to sort 
tapping the Artists tab on 
the tracks by Artists in 
the Music Library screen. 
order to view 
● The title of the screen is 
generated folders for 
Artists. 
each Artist with correct 
● There is a navigation bar 
tracks  
that contains: 

- Back button 

- Title of the screen   

- Search icon 

- Overflow menu 

● Folders are sorted by 

Artists. 
● A list of tracks is opened by 
tapping the selected Artist. 
Each folder can contain 
cover art. 
● Default cover art is 
displayed if there is no 
specific image. 
● Context pop-up is opened 
by long-tapping any Artist 
folder. 

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All functional requirements should be specific and measurable, which is why we 
have the “Acceptance Criteria” columns. The criteria for each user story provide a 
better understanding of software development teams about whether a 
requirement has been met. 

Working with MobiDev client’s projects, we created business analysis artifacts 

involving U
​ I/UX designers​ ​and​ s​ oftware developers​.  

Designers help to define requirements through sketches, wireframes, flow 

charts, and user personas. 

Software developers recommend optimal technology solutions that will 

influence the product. Technical analysis may run either parallel to or after the 
business analysis stage.   

Well-defined functional requirements may achieve: 

1. A clear vision of future software product functions 

2. Beginning estimations for the ​UI/UX design​ and software development 
stages 
3. An opportunity to choose optimal technical and design solutions for a 
better realization of a software product’s functionality  
4. Concise documentation for guidance during software product design, 
development, quality assurance, and project vision stages 
5. Avoidance of discrepancies between expectations and results when 
working on software functionality 

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Non-Functional Requirements 

Along with the functional requirements document, we create the non-functional 

requirements document. It describes how a system is going to work and contain 
software product technical characteristics, system properties, and the product 
environment. 

At MobiDev, we create non-functional requirements once we have a list of 

software product functions in a user story format. This document tracks 
measurable and clear terms that define the system’s constraints and properties. 

It’s good to involve a Q

​ A specialist​ here. They help to specify the testability of 
requirements and the quality assurance criteria for future software products.  

An example of the non-functional requirements document: 

Supported device types: 

● Mobile phones (smartphones).  
● Tablets. 
● The application should work in both Portrait and Landscape modes 

Supported platforms and OS versions: 

iOS:  Android: 

iPhone 7 - iOS 12 [1334 x 750]  Android 7.0 - Android 9.0 

iPhone X - iOS 12 [2436 x 1125]  Samsung Galaxy S7 - S10 

iPhone XR - iOS 12 [1792 x 828]  Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 

iPhone XS max - iOS 12 [2688 x  Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 

1242]  
Samsung Galaxy M10 
iPhone 11 - iOS 13 [1792 x 828] 

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 Types of testing: 
● Functional testing 
● Automated API tests 

Testing will be supported with functional requirements, test plan, 

acceptance criteria. The end product should fully pass the acceptance 
criteria user stories. 

Localization: 
Only English language is supported 

Security 
Password requirements: 
● The minimum length of the password will be 6 characters 
● Should be consistent with validation rules on the Jira backend 

Online data transfer security: 

● SSL/TLS certification 
● SQL injections protection for inputs 

Usability 
As per the system’s business goal, we have to make sure the system is 
easy and understandable enough to motivate users to use the mobile 
application 

Availability  
Application data are available online only 

Performance 
● The system shall not have any visible lags, hangs or freezers 
● All buttons and actions are responsive 
● While the device is getting information from the server, 
updating/loading screens’ information or data, a spinner or any other 
visual sign should be displayed so the user understands that a certain 
action is being performed 

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 Reliability and Productivity 
Users shall not lose any data even in negative cases such as interrupted 
app performance (incoming calls, notifications, app crashes, switching 
between apps). 

What may be achieved by well-defined non-functional requirements: 

1. Assurance of usability and effectiveness of the entire software system 

2. Identification of mandatory requirements imposed by standards and 
adjusting the system to meet them 
3. Defining of restrictions and constraints for the software development 
process 
4. Assurance about the compliance of the system with users’ environment 
5. Reduced development rework 

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The project vision, as well as functional and non-functional requirements, are 
required business analysis deliverables, but the business analysis is not limited 
to them. There are a variety of custom documents provided separately for each 
particular project. 

Competitor’s Analysis 
The competitor’s analysis is an example of an additional deliverable that the 
business analysis stage provides.  

It analyzes the main features, advantages, and disadvantages of existing 

software product offerings. Companies can improve their own solutions through 
such an investigation. 

An example of the competitor’s analysis document template: 

Our product  Competitor 1  Competitor 2  Competitor 3 

Additional information (e.g.       

links to sites) 

Business 

Positioning on the market       

Business model       

Price       

Key competitive       
advantages 

Target market       

Marketing share       

Strengths       

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 Weaknesses       

Opportunities       

Threats       

Features 

Feature 1  x  x  x 

Feature 2    x   

Feature 3  x    x 

A well-defined competitor’s analysis may achieve: 

1. A general vision of already existing solutions 

2. Insights about additional improvements in a current solution  
3. An understanding of what solutions worked and didn’t work 

All the business analysis deliverables mentioned above are not strict and 
universal rulesets. Every project we run is unique and requires different 
approaches. 

Some of our clients have already approached us with pre-defined requirements. 

In these cases, we helped modify them during the development stage.  

The takeaway is that business analysis in software development is not about the 
business itself—it’s all about realizing the solutions while taking into account 
current business goals, problems, and limitations. The result is not only the 
optimization and structuring of a software development process but also a 
well-designed software product that meets user needs.   

Of course, there are wonderful software products built without any analysis and 
documentation that use only raw ideas, enthusiasm, and brilliant skills. But is 
this approach viable in the modern tech world where competition is fierce? 

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