Okay, let's break down "portable business requirements" and what that concept encompasses.

What are "Portable Business Requirements"?

In essence, portable business requirements are business requirements that are:

• Clearly Defined: They're unambiguous, specific, and leave little room for interpretation. Everyone understands what the requirement means.


• Technology-Agnostic (Ideally): They focus on what the business needs, not how it should be implemented technologically. This allows for flexibility in choosing the best technology solution. (Sometimes, a specific technology is part of the requirement, but that should be minimized.)


• Context-Independent (To a Degree): While all requirements are context-specific to some extent, portable requirements are written in a way that minimizes their dependence on a particular project, system, or implementation. They should be understandable and relevant even if the surrounding context changes.


• Reusable: They can be applied to different projects, systems, or parts of the organization without significant modification.


• Maintainable: They are easy to update and modify as the business evolves. Their clear definition makes it easier to understand the impact of changes.


• Testable: They are written in a way that allows them to be easily tested and validated.

• Reduced Redundancy: Instead of re-writing the same requirement for every project, you can reuse existing, well-defined requirements. This saves time and effort.


• Improved Consistency: Using the same requirements across different systems or projects ensures a more consistent user experience and business processes.


• Faster Project Delivery: Having a library of pre-defined requirements can speed up the requirements gathering and analysis phase of projects.


• Lower Development Costs: Reduced ambiguity and improved consistency can lead to fewer errors and rework during development.


• Better Communication: Clear, well-defined requirements improve communication between stakeholders, developers, and testers.


• Increased Agility: The ability to reuse and modify requirements quickly makes the business more agile and responsive to change.


• Improved Traceability: It's easier to trace requirements back to their original source and to the business goals they support when requirements are well-defined and portable.


• Easier Integration: When all systems are running to the same standards of business process requirements, they are easier to integrate.

Let's say we're talking about an e-commerce system:

• Non-Portable: "The shopping cart page should use the Bootstrap 5 CSS framework." (Tied to a specific technology)


• Portable: "The system must allow customers to easily view the items they have added to their shopping cart." (Focuses on the what and allows for different implementation options)


• Non-Portable: "The 'Submit Order' button should be green." (Too specific)


• Portable: "The system must provide a clear and prominent way for customers to submit their order."


• Non-Portable: "The order processing system must use the 'OrderProcessingService' component." (Tied to a specific component in a specific system)


• Portable: "The system must process orders in a timely manner, ensuring that the customer is notified of order confirmation, shipment, and delivery."


• Non-Portable: "The 'discountcode' field in the database must be validated against the 'discountcodes' table." (Implementation Detail)


• Portable: "The system must validate discount codes to ensure they are valid and applicable to the customer's order."

• Focus on the "What," Not the "How": Describe the business need or problem being solved, rather than specifying how it should be implemented.


• Use Clear and Concise Language: Avoid jargon and technical terms that may not be understood by all stakeholders.


• Use the "Must" and "Shall" Keywords: Use these keywords to indicate mandatory requirements. Avoid vague words like "should" or "may."


• Make Requirements Testable: Write requirements in a way that allows them to be easily tested and validated.


• Use a Standard Template: Using a template for writing requirements can help ensure consistency and completeness. Common templates include:


• User Story Format: "As a [user type], I want [goal] so that [benefit]."


• Structured Format:


• Requirement ID


• Requirement Name


• Description


• Rationale


• Priority


• Acceptance Criteria


• Prioritize Requirements: Prioritize requirements based on their importance to the business.


• Review and Validate: Have stakeholders review and validate the requirements to ensure they are accurate and complete.


• Maintain a Requirements Repository: Store requirements in a central repository (e.g., a requirements management tool) so they can be easily accessed and reused.


• Use a Glossary of Terms: Define any terms that may be ambiguous or unfamiliar to stakeholders.


• Avoid Implementation Details: Don't bake-in specific code, specific software, and technical parameters into the requirements. Let the developers figure out the best approach.


• Keep it simple: Portable requirements are also easily understood and easily communicated.

• Requirements Management Tools: (e.g., Jira, Azure DevOps, Jama Connect, Polarion ALM, ReqView) These tools help you manage, track, and trace requirements.


• Use Case Modeling: Use cases can help you capture the interactions between users and the system, which can then be used to derive portable business requirements.


• Business Process Modeling: Modeling business processes can help you identify the core business requirements that are needed to support those processes.


• User Story Mapping: This technique helps you visualize the user journey and identify the requirements that are needed to support each step.


• Prototypes and Mockups: Creating prototypes and mockups can help you validate requirements and ensure that they meet the needs of the business.

• Achieving the Right Level of Abstraction: It can be difficult to strike the right balance between being too specific and being too general.


• Maintaining Requirements Over Time: As the business evolves, requirements may need to be updated or modified.


• Getting Stakeholder Buy-in: It can be challenging to get all stakeholders to agree on the requirements.


• Resistance to change: People might be used to creating requirements a specific way, and it can be difficult to get them to adopt a new approach.