There’s a high premium on knowing how to craft great definitions. Every business analyst should know how. To get you started, here are some basic criteria for great business definitions:

• It should be easy to give examples for the thing defined, but there should be no counterexamples.
• Each definition should communicate the essence of what a thing is, not what it does, how it’s used, or why it’s important.
• The definition of a thing should focus on its unique characteristics.
• Each thing you define should be distinguishable from every other thing you define using the definition alone.
• Each definition should be concise and as short as possible without loss of meaning. A definition should be readable.