What is a Business Requirement?

A Business requirement (BR) is the expression of a business need by a customer or internal project user.

A BR contains multiple different parts to explain the stakeholder need and how to meet his/her requirements:

• Customer Story: this is the requirement as expressed by the customer
• Scenario: How/where the current solution can provide a suitable scenario to answer the customer story
• Gap: For the uncovered part of the scenario, elaborate the gap/need for specific developments/setup
• Test case: A set of conditions under which a tester will determine whether the application, software system or one of its features is working as it was originally established for it to do.
• Deliverables to be provided to the customer/user
• Resources necessary to achieve the deliverables
• Additional information (approval, cost control etc.)

This set of modules was originally designed for the service/IT industry but the requirement management design has been kept as generic as possible so that it can apply to many other cases/industries (customer or internal projects):

• Construction
• Trading (New product development)
• Business Consultancy
• Web or IT development
• R&D projects
• etc.

More information about business requirements management:

• Wikipedia
• Six Sigma

Business Requirement set of modules

This module is part of a set (Business Requirements repo).

The base Business Requirements module creates the basic objects and can be used as a standalone module.

Multiple modules integrate the BR with other business areas, such as Sales, Procurement, Project or Analytic Accounting. For example:

• Sales Quotation can have an estimation supported by a BR analysis
• Project Tasks can be related to the BRs they implement or support
• Procurement and purchase can be generated out of the BR

The following workflow explains the business workflow between the BR modules and other applications in Odoo:

How to use this module?

This module only contains the standard base models for business requirement:

• BR model definition
• Standard setup and views
• Standard Workflow

Using git

The most common way to install the module is to clone the git repository in your server and add the directory to your odoo.conf file:

1. Clone the git repository

   cd your-addons-path
   git clone https://github.com/OCA/business-requirement
   cd business-requirement
   git checkout 10.0 #for the version 10.0
   

2. Update the addon path of odoo.conf

3. Restart Odoo

4. Update the addons list in your database (Menu Apps > Update Apps List in developer mode)

5. Install the Business Requirements modules in menu Apps.

Using pip

An easy way to install it with all its dependencies is using pip:

1. Recover the code from pip repository

   pip install odoo10-addon-business_requirement odoo-autodiscover
   

2. Restart Odoo

3. Update the addons list in your database (Menu Apps > Update Apps List in developer mode)

4. Install the Business Requirements modules in menu Apps.

Fresh install with Docker

If you do not have any Odoo server installed, you can start your own Odoo in few minutes via Docker in command line.

Here is the basic how-to (based on https://github.com/Elico-Corp/odoo-docker), valid for Ubuntu OS but could also easily be replicated in MacOS or Windows:

1. Install docker and docker-compose in your system

2. Create the directory structure (assuming the base directory is odoo)

   mkdir odoo && cd odoo
   mkdir -p ./volumes/postgres ./volumes/odoo/addons ./volumes/odoo/filestore \
   ./volumes/odoo/sessions
   

3. Create a docker-compose.yml file in odoo directory with following content:

   version: '3.3'
   services:
   
     postgres:
       image: postgres:9.5
       volumes:
         - ./volumes/postgres:/var/lib/postgresql/data
       environment:
         - POSTGRES_USER=odoo
   
     odoo:
       image: elicocorp/odoo:11.0
       command: start
       ports:
         - 127.0.0.1:8069:8069
       volumes:
         - ./volumes/odoo/addons:/opt/odoo/additional_addons
         - ./volumes/odoo/filestore:/opt/odoo/data/filestore
         - ./volumes/odoo/sessions:/opt/odoo/data/sessions
       links:
         - postgres:db
       environment:
         - ADDONS_REPO=https://github.com/OCA/business-requirement.git
         - ODOO_DB_USER=odoo
   

4. Fire up your container (in odoo directory)

   docker-compose up -d odoo
   

5. Open a web browser and navigate the URL you have set up in your docker-compose.yml file (http://127.0.0.1:8069 in this particular example)

6. Create a new database

7. Update the addons list in your database (Menu Apps > Update Apps List in developer mode)

8. Install the Business Requirements modules in menu Apps.

You can improve your new Odoo docker environment (add parameters, change default passwords etc.) following this documentation

Now what?

Check the Official Documentation to start using Odoo and developing your own modules.

Users

• Business Requirement User: can create and confirm a BR
• Business Requirement Manager: can create, confirm and approve a BR

Alias and emails

You can setup an alias in Settings/Technical/Email/Alias in order to create business requirements directly from email received at a specific address.

You can start conversation with the followers in the chatter area of the BR like in tasks, issue or CRM leads.

Sequences

Default numbering format: BR123456.

You can modify the default numbering sequence in Settings/Technical/Sequences&Identifier/Sequences.

Search for Business Requirement sequence and alter it if necessary.

Tags

You can create and assign tags for your business requirements in Business Requirements/Configuration/Bus. Req. Category

Master project

You can define a master project linked to the business requirement.

Followers from the project will automatically be added to the business requirements.

Simple BR

1. Define the header information

   • Master Project (Partner is the one related to the master project)
   • Priority (low, Medium, High)
   • Change request: Is it a change request? (currently only informational with n model or action)
   • Tags: any relevant tag for the business.
   • Owner and approver by default
   

2. Input the customer story, scenario gap and test case(simple html editor with image and text)

   

3. Confirm the Business requirement (for BR User and Manager) At that stage the Customer story/Scenario/Gap/Test case is not modifiable anymore

   

4. Approve the Business requirement (for BR Manager)

   

5. Once your requirement is finished and delivered you can set it as Done

   

6. Alternatively, you can cancel the BR (in case it is not relevant or mistake) or drop it (when customer makes the decision to discontinue it)

   
   

Sub-business requirements

User can create sub business requirements for a given BR for complex cases.

This is a simple parent/child relation (see roadmap).

Contributors

• Eric Caudal <eric.caudal@elico-corp.com>
• Alex Duan <alex.duan@elico-corp.com>
• Xie XiaoPeng <xie.xiaopeng@elico-corp.com>
• Victor M. Martin <victor.martin@elico-corp.com>
• Evan Li <li.aiwen@elico-corp.com>
• Reinhard Sheng <reinhard.sheng@elico-corp.com>

Maintainer

This module is maintained by the OCA.

OCA, or the Odoo Community Association, is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to support the collaborative development of Odoo features and promote its widespread use.

To contribute to this module, please visit https://odoo-community.org.