Bigsun Udaan › Business analysis guides › Sample Requirements Document: Leave Management
Worked example
Sample requirements document: simple leave management
A short, fictional Business Requirements Document (BRD) so you can see what a finished one looks like. Use it as a pattern for your own practice project.
Document: Business Requirements Document — Leave Management (sample)
Company: Greenfield Traders (fictional, 40 employees)
Prepared by: Business Analyst (learner)
Status: Draft for review
1. Purpose
Greenfield Traders currently manages employee leave through emails and a shared spreadsheet. Leave requests are sometimes missed, balances are wrong, and managers cannot easily see who is away. This document describes what a simple leave-management application must do.
2. Goals
- Employees can request leave and see their balance without asking HR.
- Managers can approve or reject requests quickly.
- HR can see leave records and reports in one place.
3. Scope
| In scope | Out of scope |
|---|---|
|
|
4. Stakeholders
| Stakeholder | Interest |
|---|---|
| Employees | Apply for leave easily and know their balance. |
| Managers | Approve leave and plan team work. |
| HR executive | Maintain leave rules and reports. |
| Management | Reduce manual effort and errors. |
5. Current process (as-is)
- Employee emails the manager to ask for leave.
- Manager replies by email and forwards it to HR.
- HR updates a shared spreadsheet by hand.
- Employee asks HR when they need to know the balance.
Problems: emails get lost, the spreadsheet is sometimes not updated, and balances can be wrong.
6. Functional requirements
| ID | Requirement | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| FR-01 | An employee shall be able to sign in with a personal account. | Must |
| FR-02 | An employee shall be able to submit a leave request with leave type, start date, end date and reason. | Must |
| FR-03 | The system shall show the employee’s remaining leave balance for each leave type. | Must |
| FR-04 | The system shall not allow a request for more days than the available balance, except for leave types marked “unpaid”. | Must |
| FR-05 | The employee’s manager shall receive a notification of each new request. | Must |
| FR-06 | A manager shall be able to approve or reject a request, and add a comment. | Must |
| FR-07 | The employee shall be notified of the decision. | Must |
| FR-08 | An employee shall be able to cancel a request that has not yet started. | Should |
| FR-09 | Managers shall be able to see a calendar of their team’s approved leave. | Should |
| FR-10 | HR shall be able to download a monthly leave report as a spreadsheet file. | Could |
7. Non-functional requirements
| ID | Requirement |
|---|---|
| NFR-01 | Security: employees can see only their own leave; managers can see only their team’s. |
| NFR-02 | Ease of use: a new employee should be able to apply for leave without training. |
| NFR-03 | Performance: pages should open within 3 seconds under normal use. |
| NFR-04 | Availability: usable on a phone browser as well as a computer. |
8. Assumptions
- Every employee has a work email address.
- Each employee has exactly one manager.
- Leave types and yearly entitlement are already decided by HR.
9. Risks
| Risk | Impact | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Employees keep using email instead of the system. | Records become incomplete. | Management announces the new process; HR stops accepting email requests after a set date. |
| Wrong opening balances are loaded. | Employees lose trust. | HR checks balances with employees before go-live. |
10. Open questions
- Can unused leave be carried forward to the next year? If yes, how many days?
- What happens if the manager is on leave? Is there a backup approver?
- Are half-day requests allowed?
- Do public holidays and weekends count as leave days?
Practice
Pick one open question above and write down how you would find the answer, and who you would ask. Then add one new functional requirement and one test case for it (see the test-case template).
Original educational material created by Bigsun Technologies for the Bigsun Udaan initiative. The people, companies and figures in the examples are fictional. This is a learning aid, not an accredited course or a guarantee of employment.