Picking the Right Tool Before You Start Writing
If you have a BRD to produce and you’re trying to work out whether to use your usual Word template, spin up a Confluence page, paste a prompt into ChatGPT, or try something purpose-built, this article is for you. I’ve written business requirements documents across government, utilities, health, and enterprise environments, and the tool choice genuinely affects the output. Not in a subtle way. In a “this document got signed off in two days versus two weeks” way.
I’m going to compare four realistic options: Ash, Confluence, Microsoft Word, and generic AI tools like ChatGPT or Copilot. I’ll focus on what matters when you have a real project in front of you right now. If you want background on what a BRD should contain, the business requirements document example on this site covers that well. Here I’m focused purely on which tool gets you to a usable first draft fastest, and which ones create problems you’ll have to fix later.
The Four Tools at a Glance
Before getting into the detail, here is a direct comparison across the criteria I use when recommending tools to BAs on projects.
| Criterion | Ash | Confluence | Microsoft Word | Generic AI (ChatGPT / Copilot) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BRD structure built in | Yes, BA-specific | Partial (templates vary) | Only if you have a template | No, requires prompting |
| Guides you through sections | Yes | No | No | No |
| Understands BA methodology | Yes | No | No | Partially, inconsistently |
| Collaboration features | Limited | Strong | Via SharePoint/OneDrive | No |
| Traceability support | Yes | Via plugins | Manual only | No |
| Output quality for BRDs | High | Moderate | Depends on template quality | Variable, often generic |
| Learning curve | Low | Moderate | Low (if template exists) | Low (but results vary) |
| Cost | Subscription | Per user licence | Part of M365 | Free tier / subscription |
Microsoft Word: The Default That Has a Hidden Cost
Word is still the most common tool I see BAs using to write BRDs. It’s familiar, stakeholders can open it without any extra software, and it’s almost always available. On a project with a mature BA template, Word works reasonably well. The problem is that most organisations don’t have a mature template. They have a document someone wrote in 2019 that has been copied and pasted across fifteen projects, losing its formatting and logical structure each time.
In my experience, the biggest risk with Word is that it does nothing to help you think. It is a blank page with formatting. If you know exactly what your BRD needs to contain and in what order, Word will faithfully hold that content. But it won’t prompt you when you’ve missed a section, it won’t flag when your business requirements have quietly become solution requirements, and it won’t help you structure traceability between requirements and business objectives.
For early-career BAs, Word can actually slow down development because there’s no scaffolding. You produce something that looks like a document but doesn’t function like a BRD. If you do use Word, start with a solid template. The Word BRD template on this site is worth having as a baseline.
Confluence: Strong on Collaboration, Weak on Structure
Confluence is excellent if your project team is already living inside Jira and Confluence. I’ve used it on agile delivery programmes where requirements evolved weekly and traceability between user stories and business objectives needed to be visible to the whole team. For that use case, it’s genuinely useful.
The limitation is that Confluence doesn’t know what a BRD is. It provides you with a blank wiki page and some page templates, but those templates are generic documentation structures, not BA artefacts. Getting a proper BRD out of Confluence requires discipline and a strong internal template. Without that, you end up with a series of pages that contain requirements but don’t function as a single coherent document you can hand to a sponsor for sign-off.
Confluence also has a cost that’s easy to underestimate on smaller projects. If your stakeholders aren’t already Confluence users, getting a document reviewed and signed off becomes a process overhead in itself. I’ve sat in workshops where a sponsor printed out forty Confluence pages because they couldn’t navigate the tool, and we ended up reviewing a document that was three versions out of date.
Generic AI Tools: Useful Accelerators, Not BA Tools
ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and similar general-purpose AI tools can generate impressive-looking BRD drafts quickly. I use them regularly as part of my workflow. The issue is that they are generalist content generators, not BA methodology tools. They don’t understand the difference between a business requirement and a functional requirement. They will confidently produce documents that mix solution design into the requirements section, use inconsistent numbering, and omit entire categories of requirement that a practising BA would consider essential.
If you give a generic AI tool a detailed prompt with your project context, stakeholder list, and a clear requirements taxonomy, you can get a workable first draft. But that prompt engineering takes time and expertise. If you know enough to write that prompt well, you probably know enough to write a decent first draft yourself. The tool adds value, but it doesn’t provide the BA-specific structure and methodology awareness that separates a usable BRD from a generic document. For more on how AI fits into BA practice more broadly, the article on AI for business analysis covers that territory in depth.
Ash: Purpose-Built for BRD Work
Ash is the tool I reach for when I need to produce a BRD quickly without sacrificing quality. It’s built specifically for BA work, which means the structure reflects actual BA methodology rather than generic document conventions. It prompts you through the sections a BRD needs, it understands the distinction between business requirements and functional requirements, and it helps you frame requirements at the right level of abstraction.
What I find most useful is that Ash reduces the blank-page problem. When you’re under time pressure and a stakeholder has just handed you a list of features they want built, having a tool that asks the right questions to surface the underlying business need is genuinely valuable. That’s the kind of scaffolding that Word and Confluence simply don’t provide.
A Real Example: Where Tool Choice Made a Difference
On Project X, a mid-size digital transformation engagement in a public sector organisation, I was brought in to produce a BRD for a content management system replacement. The procurement team had already provided a detailed specifications spreadsheet covering content creation, content management, publishing, presentation, search, and technical requirements across hundreds of individual items. The breadth of the requirement set was significant.
The team’s default was to use Word. A previous BA had started a document and it had grown to sixty pages of bullet points with no clear distinction between business requirements, functional requirements, and vendor evaluation criteria. When I took it over, the IT lead pushed back on restructuring it. His position was that the existing document had taken three weeks to produce and the procurement timeline didn’t allow for rework. That was a real constraint. I couldn’t start from scratch.
What I did was use Ash to rapidly produce a structured BRD shell that separated the business requirements from the detailed functional specification. I then used that shell to reorganise the existing content rather than replace it. The sponsor could see immediately that the new structure had a logical flow: business objectives at the top, capability requirements in the middle, and evaluation criteria at the bottom. The IT lead came around once he could see that his detailed technical requirements hadn’t been lost, just repositioned. The document was signed off within a week of the restructure. The tool didn’t write the BRD, but it gave me a framework that resolved the structural problem quickly. That is exactly the kind of task where a purpose-built tool earns its place.
How to Choose Based on Your Situation
- You’re on a fast-moving agile project with an existing Confluence setup. Stick with Confluence, but invest time upfront in a page template that enforces BRD structure. Without that template, your requirements will drift into solution territory.
- You need a document that stakeholders can review and sign off as a formal artefact. Word or Ash will serve you better than Confluence for this. Confluence pages don’t feel like documents to most non-technical stakeholders.
- You have a complex requirement set spanning multiple capability areas. Ash handles this well because it maintains structural consistency across sections. Word requires significant template discipline to achieve the same result.
- You’re using generic AI to accelerate your drafting. Use it, but treat the output as raw material. Apply a BA methodology lens before you share anything with a stakeholder. The distinction between business and functional requirements matters, and generic AI tools blur it regularly. The article on BRD versus FRD is worth revisiting before you review an AI-generated draft.
- You’re an early-career BA without a strong template library. Ash is the lowest-risk starting point. The guided structure teaches you what a BRD should contain while you produce it, which is genuine on-the-job learning.
What Actually Matters in a BRD Tool
Most BRD tool comparisons focus on features. In practice, the thing that matters most is whether the tool helps you think clearly about requirements. A tool that guides you through the right questions, maintains structural separation between business need and solution detail, and produces output that stakeholders can navigate without training is worth far more than a tool with sophisticated collaboration features that produces structurally weak documents. The best BRD tool for you is the one that reduces the gap between what you know about the project and what appears on the page, and that does it without requiring you to become an expert in the tool itself before you can be productive.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best software for writing a BRD?
The best software depends on your context, but purpose-built BA tools like Ash produce structurally sound BRDs faster than generic tools because they understand BA methodology. Microsoft Word with a strong template is a reliable fallback, while Confluence suits teams already embedded in the Atlassian ecosystem. Generic AI tools like ChatGPT accelerate drafting but require significant BA oversight to produce quality output.
Can I use ChatGPT to write a business requirements document?
Yes, ChatGPT can generate a BRD draft, but it will often blend business requirements with functional requirements and miss sections that a practising BA would consider essential. You need to treat the output as a raw first draft and apply a BA methodology lens before sharing it with stakeholders. The more detailed and structured your prompt, the more useful the output, but that level of prompt engineering requires BA knowledge to get right.
Is Confluence good for writing BRDs?
Confluence works well for agile teams that are already using Jira and need requirements to be accessible and collaborative. However, it lacks built-in BRD structure, so you need a strong internal page template to produce a document that functions as a formal BA artefact. For documents that require stakeholder sign-off, most non-technical sponsors prefer Word or PDF-style documents over wiki pages.
What is the difference between a BRD tool and a requirements management tool?
A BRD tool helps you write and structure a business requirements document, which is typically a project-level artefact produced for stakeholder review and sign-off. A requirements management tool manages individual requirements across their lifecycle, including traceability, versioning, and linking to test cases. You often need both, but the BRD tool is the starting point for capturing and communicating business needs in an accessible format.
How long does it take to write a BRD?
A straightforward BRD for a bounded project scope can take two to five days if you have good access to stakeholders and a solid template or tool. Complex projects with multiple capability areas, integration requirements, and large stakeholder groups can take two to four weeks when you include elicitation, review cycles, and sign-off. Using a purpose-built tool like Ash can significantly reduce the time spent on structure and formatting, freeing you to focus on the analysis work.
Try Ash, Your Virtual BA
If this comparison has you leaning toward a purpose-built tool, Ash is exactly what you’ve been reading about. It guides you through producing a structured, methodology-sound BRD without the blank-page problem, the structural drift that generic AI produces, or the formatting discipline that Word demands. Whether you’re starting a new requirements document or trying to rescue one that’s lost its structure, Ash gives you the scaffolding to produce something stakeholders can actually work with. Try Ash Virtual BA and see how quickly a structured BRD takes shape.
Further reading
Written by Sam Cordes, founder of the Business Analyst’s Toolkit.