--- name: business-goal-to-technical-requirement-translator description: "Converts plain-language business goals from customer conversations into structured technical requirements — including functional and non-functional requirements, data and integration dependencies, acceptance criteria, assumptions, and open questions to confirm. Use when translating discovery-call notes or stakeholder objectives into an implementable requirement set for solution design, scoping, or RFP responses." argument-hint: "[business-goals] [product-context]" allowed-tools: ["Read"] --- # Business Goal to Technical Requirement Translator ## Purpose Turn vague, outcome-language business goals captured in a sales or discovery conversation into a structured, implementable technical requirement set — with functional requirements, non-functional requirements, dependencies, acceptance criteria, and the open questions that must be resolved before scoping. Eliminates the gap between what a customer said they want and what an engineering team can actually build against. ## When to Use Invoke this skill when the user asks to: - Convert discovery-call notes or meeting summaries into technical requirements - Translate a customer's business objective into something engineering can scope - Prepare a requirements section for a proposal, SOW, or RFP response - Structure a stakeholder's wish list into functional and non-functional requirements - Identify hidden technical dependencies behind a stated business goal - Surface the assumptions and open questions that need confirmation before a quote ## Inputs Required Before starting, collect: - **Business goals**: The plain-language goals as the customer stated them (paste raw notes, quotes, or a summary) - **Product context**: What the SaaS product does and the modules/capabilities relevant to this deal - **Customer profile**: Industry, company size, and technical maturity (e.g., has a dev team / no internal IT) - **Existing systems**: Tools the customer already uses that may need to integrate (CRM, ERP, identity provider, data warehouse, etc.) - **Constraints**: Known budget, timeline, compliance, or platform constraints mentioned in the conversation - **Stakeholders**: Who voiced each goal and their role (so requirements can be traced and prioritized) If customer technical maturity or existing systems are unknown, generate requirements assuming a mid-maturity buyer and flag the missing detail explicitly in the Open Questions section. ## Instructions ### Step 1: Extract and Restate Each Business Goal Parse the raw input and isolate each distinct business goal. For each one: - Restate it in one clean sentence as an **outcome** ("The customer wants to reduce manual order entry time") - Tag the **business driver** behind it: cost reduction / revenue growth / risk & compliance / customer experience / operational efficiency - Note **who said it** and any urgency or priority signal Do not yet translate — the goal here is a clean, deduplicated inventory. Merge overlapping statements; split compound goals into separate items. ### Step 2: Translate Each Goal into Functional Requirements For each business goal, derive the specific system behaviors required to achieve it. Each functional requirement must be: - Written in the form "The system shall [specific capability]" - Tied back to the goal it serves (traceability) - Concrete enough to build against — not "the system shall be user-friendly" A single business goal typically produces 2–5 functional requirements. Example: "reduce manual order entry" → automated order ingestion from email/API, field-level data validation, exception queue for failed records, audit log of automated entries. ### Step 3: Derive Non-Functional Requirements For each goal cluster, identify the quality attributes implied but rarely stated by the customer. Cover the relevant categories: - **Performance**: throughput, latency, concurrent users, data volume - **Security & compliance**: authentication method, data residency, regulatory standard (SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR) - **Availability & reliability**: uptime expectation, recovery objectives - **Scalability**: expected growth in users/records/transactions - **Usability & accessibility**: skill level of end users, accessibility standards - **Maintainability & integration**: API needs, configurability, admin control State each as a measurable target where possible ("99.9% uptime," not "high availability"). If the customer gave no number, propose a defensible default and mark it as an assumption. ### Step 4: Map Dependencies and Integrations Identify what must connect or exist for the requirements to be satisfied: - **Integration points**: each external system, the direction of data flow, and the likely mechanism (native connector / REST API / webhook / file import / iPaaS) - **Data dependencies**: source-of-truth systems, required data fields, migration or sync needs - **Identity & access**: SSO/SAML, role-based access, provisioning - **Sequencing**: which requirements depend on another being delivered first Flag any dependency that relies on something outside the SaaS product's control (e.g., customer must expose an ERP API). ### Step 5: Write Acceptance Criteria For each functional requirement, write 1–2 testable acceptance criteria in Given/When/Then form. These define "done" and become the basis for UAT. Keep them binary and observable — a tester must be able to mark each pass or fail without interpretation. ### Step 6: Capture Assumptions and Open Questions - **Assumptions**: every inference made to fill a gap (defaults, unstated standards, presumed system access) — listed so the customer can confirm or correct - **Open Questions**: the specific things that must be answered before scoping or quoting, each phrased as a direct question to ask the customer, ordered by how much they affect scope or risk ## Output Format - **Structure**: Requirements traceability matrix (table) linking each business goal to its functional requirements, followed by structured sections for non-functional requirements, dependencies, acceptance criteria, assumptions, and open questions - **Length**: 800–1,400 words depending on goal count - **Format**: Goal-to-requirement matrix as a table; functional and non-functional requirements as ID-prefixed lists (FR-1, NFR-1); acceptance criteria in Given/When/Then; assumptions and open questions as numbered lists - **Sections**: Goal Inventory → Requirements Traceability Matrix → Functional Requirements → Non-Functional Requirements → Dependencies & Integrations → Acceptance Criteria → Assumptions → Open Questions - **Tone**: Solution architect — precise, neutral, implementation-grounded. No sales language, no hype. ## Quality Checklist Before delivering output, verify: - [ ] Every functional requirement traces back to a specific business goal (no orphan requirements) - [ ] Every business goal produced at least one functional requirement (no dropped goals) - [ ] Requirements are written as testable system behaviors — none read as vague qualities like "intuitive" or "robust" without a measurable target - [ ] Every non-functional requirement that lacks a customer-stated number is marked as an assumption with a proposed default - [ ] Each functional requirement has at least one Given/When/Then acceptance criterion - [ ] Open questions are phrased as direct, askable questions and ordered by scope impact ## Notes - The highest-value output is often the Open Questions section — surfacing what wasn't said is what separates a real scope from an optimistic one - Watch for goals that quietly imply an integration the product can't natively support; flag these early as the biggest scope and timeline risk - When a customer states a solution ("we need a dashboard") rather than a goal, trace it back to the underlying outcome before writing requirements — the stated solution is often not the best fit - Use stable requirement IDs (FR-/NFR-) so the output can drop directly into a proposal, SOW, or backlog without renumbering --- ## How to use this skill This file is a Claude Code skill in [Anthropic's standard format](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/skills) — markdown with YAML frontmatter at the top. **Installing in Claude Code:** - `~/.claude/skills//SKILL.md` — auto-loads in every session anywhere on your machine (recommended for skills you'll use across multiple projects) - `/.claude/skills//SKILL.md` — auto-loads only when working in that project (recommended for project-specific skills) Restart Claude Code or open a new session to register. **Using in Claude.ai, ChatGPT, Gemini, or other AI tools:** 1. 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