This Requirements Template makes it easy to align stakeholders and avoid scope creep by documenting a clear scope of work in a single table. It’s intentionally lightweight—no complex tooling, just a structured way to capture what’s in scope, who owns each item, and when it will be delivered.
Each requirement is logged with an ID, title, user story, acceptance criteria, priority, owner, status, effort, etc. By laying this out early, teams gain a shared language to discuss trade-offs, push back on out-of-scope requests, and keep delivery focused on the MVP.
Whether you’re starting a CMS implementation, integrating with enterprise systems, or simply trying to keep everyone on the same page, this template helps ensure scope clarity from day one.
A few clarifications for some key columns above:
A user story is a light-weight description of a feature from the perspective of the end user. It captures who wants something, what they want, and why they want it. The standard format is:
As a <type of user>, I want to be able to <some feature> so that <benefit/value>.
Purpose:
The phrase “As a user…” frames the story in terms of value for the user, not focusing us on the solution details.It ensures the team focuses on what the user experiences, rather than just the backend or code, because sometimes the original solution may not work and the engineering team may pivot to a new technical solution that still delivers the “so that” benefit for the user.
Example: As a user, I want to log in with my existing SSO account so that I don’t need to create a new password.
Here’s what it tells us: