The level of abstraction for a requirement refers to the different perspectives, the level of detail, and the representation formats that are used for different stakeholder audiences. Not all stakeholders may require the same level of information or require information in the same format or representation. It is important for the business analyst to keep this in mind when preparing different models of requirements for different stakeholder groups.

Let's look at an example where we add a functional capability to validate a user during the login process of an existing online banking system.

The level of abstraction used when describing the requirements will be very different when communicating with the head of the organization compared to the development team who are building the new module:

• The head of the organization prefers to only know whether the user experience is secure and whether there is a level of security verification included in the new module.
• The development team, however, would need to know, for example, the exact detail of the verification steps and rules, as well as any additional or updated field-level information in order to build the new module.