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I am currently learning how requirement gathering is done. However I am trying to understand the difference in documentation between business objective (the things that must be done) and business requirements.

For example, if a business needs to track field employees, what would my business objective and business requirement be for my project?

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  • These terms are likely overloaded, so it is better to seek clarification from the actual people involved. Also, this is not really anything to do with UX, so might be better on a different SO site.
    – Steve Jones
    Apr 15, 2018 at 9:48
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    As Steve Jones says it's better to seek clarification from the people in your team who are using these terms. This industry is still relatively young and the lexicon is still in formation so terms are largely open to interpretation.
    – Roux Martin
    Apr 16, 2018 at 9:44
  • I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because this is a Business Analysis question, not a User Experience one. Users don't care if the application they're using meets a business objective or a business requirement.
    – JonW ♦
    Apr 17, 2018 at 10:03

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You provided a real example (tracking field workers) so I'll happily answer from my limited but real experience with field worker management software.

This solution allowed merchandisers to task, schedule and track their field workers to make sure they were attending to routes in the right order, doing everything correctly and generally following instructions. The consequence of their not doing so was incorrectly or unstocked products, and product not being sold. Fraud was also a problem, as they prior to mobile software they had field workers gaming the system in different ways.

So their objectives, or what the business needs, included:

  • Keep field worker costs under control by eliminating time fraud
  • Get the products merchandised and presented as specified
  • Keep the store shelves stocked with more product when it sells out

Expressed as requirements:

  • Ability to know where workers are while on the clock
  • Ability to known how long field workers' average store visits are
  • Ability to schedule worker visits according to most efficient routes
  • Ability to know whether workers executed on the instructions given for a location

In UX, it's definitely in your best interest to understand business objectives because you otherwise might not be solving the right problems.

Requirements are how you define the criteria to fulfill an objective. In UX, you can think of it as the description of what design needs to accomplish.

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