Vendor-neutral requirements planning
Turn your MRR workflow into requirements vendors can actually demonstrate.
Start with the work, assign a priority, name the proof you need, and define what a pass looks like. A requirement is more useful when two reviewers can reach the same conclusion from the same demonstration.
This template is designed for an independent consultant pharmacist, a small consultant pharmacy practice, or a larger review team building a shortlist, demo script, request for information, or procurement brief.
Before writing features
Map one real case from intake to a closed loop.
Generic feature lists reward vocabulary. A workflow map reveals the handoffs, decisions, records, and exceptions the software must support.
Choose a representative scenario
Use a de-identified case that includes data receipt, medication review, a recommendation, report delivery, a response, unresolved follow-up, and later history retrieval.
Mark owners and handoffs
Name who performs each step, which system holds the record, what moves between people, and where the practice currently checks status manually.
Add difficult exceptions
Include a correction, covering pharmacist, unavailable source, late response, missing history, or other common exception instead of testing only the clean path.
Requirements starter
Write each requirement as a testable statement.
Replace broad labels such as “reporting” or “integration” with the work, user, condition, result, and evidence that matter. These rows are prompts, not mandatory requirements for every practice.
| Requirement area | Write down | Proof to request |
|---|---|---|
| Data intake and resident context | Required sources, fields, frequency, matching, corrections, missing-data handling, and responsible party. | Show a representative intake, an exception, provenance, and the steps required when data is incomplete or wrong. |
| Review workflow | Review types, work queues, due status, resident history, documentation, pharmacist judgment, and coverage expectations. | Complete a normal review and a covering-pharmacist handoff without skipping preparation or history retrieval. |
| Recommendations and communication | Recipients, recommendation content, urgency, delivery method, corrections, and the record the practice needs to retain. | Create, correct, send or export, and later retrieve a recommendation with its relevant context. |
| Responses and follow-up | Response states, responsibility, due or review dates, unresolved work, outcome notes, closure rules, and reopening. | Record multiple response outcomes, find overdue or pending work, transfer ownership, close it, and reopen it. |
| Psychotropic and focused review work | The practice's review, documentation, follow-up, and reporting needs for applicable focused workflows. | Demonstrate the practice's scenario and identify which clinical or regulatory decisions remain outside the product. |
| Facility and practice reports | Audience, content, period, grouping, status definitions, corrections, approval, delivery, and archive needs. | Generate a representative report, trace it to supporting records, correct it, and retrieve the earlier version if needed. |
| Users, roles, and oversight | Access by role, facility boundaries, temporary coverage, account lifecycle, approvals, and activity evidence. | Configure representative roles, test permitted and restricted actions, remove access, and show the resulting record. |
| Data portability and retention | Export content, formats, attachments, history, timing, frequency, access after termination, and validation ownership. | Provide a sample export and data dictionary, then show how the practice can reconcile records and reports. |
| Availability and contingency | Critical tasks, downtime process, backup responsibility, restoration expectations, support contacts, and catch-up work. | Walk through a service or data-source interruption and show how current work and later reconciliation are handled. |
| Implementation and support | Configuration tasks, migration, training, test environment, issue process, milestones, dependencies, and sign-off. | Map each deliverable to an owner, date, evidence of completion, acceptance condition, and applicable charge. |
| Commercial and contract fit | Included scope, billing basis, renewal, service changes, dependencies, notice, termination, assistance, and exit deliverables. | Trace each important operational promise to the quote, order form, agreement, service terms, or written response. |
Keep the vendor's answer, evidence source, reviewer, status, and follow-up date beside each row. Leave an unanswered item marked as unknown. On a narrow screen, focus this table and scroll horizontally to see every column.
Fillable working copy
Testable requirements working table
Use one row for each requirement that could affect the decision. Type into the blank fields, then print or save the page as a PDF before leaving; entries stay only in this browser page and are not submitted or saved by the site.
| Requirement area | Requirement | Priority / reason | Evidence / pass | Owner / status | Cost / contract | Open question |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Data intake and resident context | ||||||
| Review workflow | ||||||
| Recommendations and communication | ||||||
| Responses and follow-up | ||||||
| Psychotropic and focused review work | ||||||
| Facility and practice reports | ||||||
| Users, roles, and oversight | ||||||
| Data portability and retention | ||||||
| Availability and contingency | ||||||
| Implementation and support | ||||||
| Commercial and contract fit | ||||||
| Practice-specific requirement 1 | ||||||
| Practice-specific requirement 2 | ||||||
| Practice-specific requirement 3 |
Do not enter resident information or other protected health information. On a narrow screen, focus this table and scroll horizontally to reach every field.
Requirement anatomy
Give every important row five fields.
The discipline is simple: a buyer should be able to tell why the requirement exists, how important it is, who will judge it, what evidence counts, and what remains unresolved.
Requirement
State what the user or practice needs to accomplish, under what condition, and with what usable result. Avoid prescribing a specific product design unless it is genuinely necessary.
Priority and reason
Mark it must, should, could, or out of scope, then record the workflow, risk, contract, client, or operating reason behind that priority.
Evidence and acceptance
Specify whether you need a live demonstration, sample output, configuration view, technical document, contract term, reference, or pilot result—and define a pass.
Owner and status
Name the reviewer who can accept the answer and track it as confirmed, partial, unknown, excluded, dependent on another party, or failed.
Cost and contract trace
Record whether the capability is included, optional, usage-based, custom, third-party, or assigned to the practice, and identify where the commitment appears in writing.
Demo and scoring discipline
Use the template to produce evidence, not a feature-count winner.
A large score can conceal a failed must-have. Review the underlying proof and workflow tradeoffs before calculating any weighted total.
Send the scenario in advance
Give finalists the same de-identified workflow, roles, outputs, and exceptions so the demonstration can be prepared without changing the test.
Distinguish live, configured, and planned
Record what was shown in the product, what depends on configuration or another service, and what was described as future or custom work.
Record partial answers precisely
Note the steps that work, the manual remainder, responsible party, dependency, additional cost, and written follow-up needed.
Gate on must-haves before scoring
Resolve failed or unknown must-have requirements first. Do not let many low-value points mathematically erase a critical gap.