Creating a BRD (business requirement document) with airtable

[antogiamba]

Hi All,

I'm evaluating airtable for replacing other tools, and I would like to know if in your experience is possible to implement what is written in the following link with just airtable https://www.airtable.com/articles/product/business-requirements-document

Is there any template? My aim is to build a complete BRD directly on airtable in a collaborative way and without using any external tools.

Any suggest?

[ScottWorld]

That’s so weird & misleading that Airtable would have that article on their blog, since Airtable cannot create business requirement documents on its own!

Airtable has the Page Designer extension, but it can only create documents that are less than one page long, and it cannot be automated in any way.

So you would definitely need to use external tools to create a business requirements document.

Two popular options are DocuMint and DocsAutomator, although my Airtable consulting clients typically use Make's advanced automations & integrations for Airtable to create their documents. Make communicates with Microsoft Word, Google Docs, DocuMint, and dozens of other document creation apps on the market.

There is a small learning curve with Make, which is why I created this basic navigation video to help. I also provide the links to a few other Make training resources there as well. For example, to instantly trigger your Make scenarios from Airtable, check out this thread.

p.s. If you have a budget for your project and you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with the Make side of things, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consulting — ScottWorld 

[DayneB]

We're also exploring how Airtable can be used not only to publish a BRD, but to manage all phases of the requirements lifecycle (from elicitation thru to implementation)

[ScottWorld]

Yes, that's what Airtable is perfectly suited for! 🙂

[DayneB]

Thanks @ScottWorld ,  Do you know if anyone else has put this together in Airtable?  Would like to see how they manage items such as:

• Stakeholder approvals
• Publishing a multi-page BRD
• Giving access to various stakeholders such as vendors, clients, QA during various stages of the requirements management lifecycle.

[ScottWorld]

Yes, all of those requests are some of the most common use cases for Airtable, so I'm sure that there are lots of examples out there of people who have created full apps like this.

However, to create a full app like this, you would typically need to dive deep into Airtable's tools and 3rd-party tools.

For example:

1. You can create approval flows through emails or through Airtable's interfaces. I discuss approval flows through emails in this Airtable podcast episode.

2. To create multi-page BRDs, you would need to use Make's document automations or DocuMint or DocsAutomator.

3. To create varying levels of access to various stakeholders, you could either use Airtable's interfaces (if all of your stakeholders have Airtable accounts). Otherwise, you would want to turn to a portal app like Noloco or JetAdmin.

JetAdmin is probably the quickest portal to setup, but Noloco is the most powerful & customizable portal.

The CEO of Noloco gave a demonstration of his product on this Airtable podcast episode.

I also give a brief tutorial of Noloco on this Airtable podcast episode.

And I also presented a full one-hour webinar on Noloco called Building a Client Portal on Noloco powered by Airtable.

p.s. When building a large system like this, you may want to work with an expert Airtable consultant like myself. If your company has a budget for your project, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consulting — ScottWorld