One thing with regard to business requirements is that we require detailed business requirements from the business. We work with the business to help them draft the text but in the end they own the document.

With that being said, I do have a question. I noticed that the BABOK defines business requirements as high-level objectives and goals. Why high-level? In my opinion, for a business requirement to be useful, it has to be detailed. All of our system requirements (functional and non-functional) trace back to detailed requirements. To me, with all due respect, I do not see the value in high-level business requirements. The business requirements need to be detailed.

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Brian

Business need – the main reason the project is being created.
Business requirements – business goals and objectives that have to be achieved or helped by the project outcomes.
Stakeholders requirements – probably the costumer notification from your example would be placed here, as “the costumer wants to be aware of what’s going on with the order”.
Solution approach – what kind of solution are we thinking about in general therms (even for a new solution, most of the times you have an general idea of the kind of technology that will be involved).

After that it gets easy to rate the solutions options and go ahead with the solution’s requirements that can be also analyzed in an iterative development life cycle. (take care not to transform this logical flow into a waterfall!).

I believe that calling all requirements “business requirements” is a generalization that is becoming less and less useful and a source of lots of misunderstandings.