# CloudRevenue — Starter BRD > **What this is**: A starter BRD. Sections 1–3 (Executive Summary, Business Context, Key Business Questions) are filled in to the level a real stakeholder might hand to an analyst. Sections 4–8 are intentionally underspecified — they are the exercise. > > **How to use it**: This is the practice artifact. Apply the [eight-section template](brd-template.md) and the transcript-driven elicitation loop (Appendix E § Section 2) to complete it. The 7-prompt starter pack ([extraction prompt](prompt-extraction.md), [template-fill prompt](prompt-template-fill.md), [contradiction-log prompt](prompt-contradiction-log.md)) is designed for exactly this work. > > **Then**: Compare your completed CloudRevenue BRD against either the [CloudRevenue completed exemplar](cloudrevenue-completed.md) (same domain, direct comparison of Sections 4–8) or the [AIRS exemplar](airs-exemplar.md) (different domain, shows the same eight-section shape holds across research-vs-commercial contexts). The point is not to match either BRD field for field; it is to feel which sections are easy, which force a stakeholder conversation, and which you are tempted to skip because they are uncomfortable. The discomfort is the data. --- ## Business Requirements Document ### CloudRevenue Portfolio Dashboard — Q4 Investment Planning - **Project**: Portfolio dashboard for Cloud Sales Operations supporting Q4 investment decisions across the eight product families in the cloud portfolio - **Stakeholder**: VP of Cloud Sales Operations - **Date**: 2026-06-03 - **Priority**: High ### 1. Executive Summary The VP of Cloud Sales Operations needs to identify the three product families that should absorb the largest Q4 investment reductions, with defensible rationale for each, in time for the leadership offsite on 2026-09-15. This dashboard consolidates revenue performance, customer-retention, sales-cycle, and territory-coverage metrics across the eight product families in the cloud portfolio. The dashboard's primary job is to support the VP's offsite presentation; its secondary job is to support the routine monthly portfolio review that the VP's office runs with the eight product general managers. ### 2. Business Context Cloud Sales Operations currently relies on a quarterly slide deck assembled by the VP's chief of staff from eight different product-family reports, each maintained by the product GM's own analytics team using inconsistent metric definitions. The Q3 2026 deck took 47 working hours to assemble and surfaced metric-definition disputes in three of the eight product families that absorbed the first hour of the leadership offsite. The VP wants a single source of truth that the chief of staff can pull from in minutes rather than days, with metric definitions agreed across all eight product families in advance. ### 3. Key Business Questions ***Revenue Performance*** 1. Which product families have grown, held, or declined in trailing-twelve-month revenue, and by how much? 2. Which product families' Q4 forecasts deviate most from the quarter's planned revenue, and what is driving the deviation? 3. Which product families have the highest revenue concentration in the top ten customers? 4. Which product families' annual recurring revenue is at risk from contracts up for renewal in Q4 or Q1? ***Customer Retention*** 1. Which product families have the highest customer churn in the trailing twelve months, and how does churn correlate with sales-cycle length? 2. Which product families show the largest gap between gross retention and net retention? 3. Which customer segments (size band, vertical, geography) drive the most churn for each product family? ***Sales Cycle and Territory*** 1. Which product families have the longest average sales cycle, and how has the cycle length trended over the last six quarters? 2. Which territories have the largest revenue concentration in a single product family (territory-product dependency risk)? ### 4. Success Criteria [PLACEHOLDER: The starter ships with Sections 4–8 underspecified. Run the transcript-driven elicitation loop against your CloudRevenue stakeholder transcripts (or simulated transcripts using the [extraction prompt](prompt-extraction.md) + [template-fill prompt](prompt-template-fill.md)) to fill this section. Use the AIRS exemplar's Success Criteria as a calibration reference for the level of measurability required — each criterion should be testable, not aspirational.] ### 5. Stakeholder Requirements [PLACEHOLDER: Identify Primary Users and Secondary Users. The VP of Cloud Sales Operations is the request stakeholder; the eight product GMs and their analytics leads are likely secondary users; the chief of staff is the day-to-day operator. Confirm usage patterns, frequency, and venue (laptop / large-screen offsite display / mobile) for each role. The AIRS exemplar shows the granularity expected.] ### 6. Data Requirements [PLACEHOLDER: Identify data sources, refresh frequency, historical horizon, data sensitivity, and known quality issues. The cross-product-family metric-definition disputes from Section 2 are a known quality issue that needs explicit resolution before deployment — name them here with the agreed reconciliation plan.] ### 7. Deliverables [PLACEHOLDER: Specify the deliverable format, access method, mobile requirement, target go-live, and review cadence. The 2026-09-15 leadership offsite is a fixed deadline; back-plan the go-live from that date with adequate review time. Confirm whether the offsite presentation will use the live dashboard on a large screen or a slide-export.] ### 8. Constraints & Assumptions [PLACEHOLDER: Document the constraints (offsite deadline, cross-product-family metric-definition reconciliation, the chief-of-staff handoff, any data-sensitivity restrictions) and the assumptions being treated as true without separate verification.] ### Approval | Role | Name | Date | Signature | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Stakeholder (VP of Cloud Sales Operations) | | | | | Data Owner | | | | | Analyst | | | | --- **Practice prompt**: Open the [extraction prompt](prompt-extraction.md) and the [template-fill prompt](prompt-template-fill.md). Either compose a realistic transcript (a ten-minute kickoff call between the VP and your analyst persona, plus a follow-up email thread) or use a transcript from a comparable real project. Run the loop. The output should be a draft BRD with Sections 4–8 populated and a gap inventory of `[PLACEHOLDER]` markers you can close through targeted follow-up. Two iterations is typical.