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Hi Madimo, 

Lets start with "What is a Business Need?" - In short, a business need is a statement which defines what the business want to acheive. It tends to be a very high lefvel statement with little, if any, actual requirements. An example would be "We want to sell 30% more of our untis". Now how you carry this out could be solved in several ways. So, as a BA, the first thing you will do is hold a high level meeting (following a kick off metting if you have them), to discuss how you want ot acheive this Need. Note that a Need should have some form of Success Statement. These statements outline when the project is 'Done'. I.e. it has been completed satifactorily. 

So lets say in that meeting you agree that you will do this by creating an e_commerce website that sells your Units. A 'Unit' by the way is the thing you make or want to sell. So lets assume you are working in Agile, your Epic would be "Build an e-Commerce website". Features would break that down into chunks based on what the Devs/Test and other project members agree.

As the BA, you work on each gathering requirements on each so that your Devs know what to build.

The difference therefore between a Business Need and a Business Requirement is that one is very high level, with (at that stage) minimal detail and the other is two or three levels down from that Need and states more detail about one part of that Need (Note: a requirement should not look to answer the whole need).

In Agile terms, the Business Need = The Epic, the User Story = the requirement(s). 

Hi Madimo

A need is an initial expression of something by the stakeholder (customer, etc.).

But that need is not specific enough to turn into a set of requirements for which you would then be able to take forward into a solution. So you need to elaborate.

A simple example.

Need: I need to provide a report to the regional manager on sales numbers

Requirement: For that to become a requirement it would need elaborating using questions such as

- When, and how often is the report to be produced?

- How should the sales numbers be collated?

- What period does the report cover?

- What is the scope of the report - is it all sales for the region, is it just for a specific branch. If it's for the region do you need to collate all the sales figures across all the branches?

- What is the content of the report?

etc..

And so you end up delving deeply to understand the underpinning concepts for this need. Which is the requirements elaboration process.

To address the non functional requirements then you would want to understand aspects such as:

- When do the sales close at the end of a period, so we can give an NFR around when a system would be able to start the report generation

- How quickly should the report be put together, and when does the report need to be sent by?

I hope that helps,

James

http://baea.global/Thriving-In-Business-Analysis