What Is a Product Requirements Document (PRD)?
Product development is one of the riskiest business tasks. In a 2018 analysis, Harvard Business School discovered that 30,000 new products come to market every year--and?95% of these products fail.
Yet, without products, most businesses can't exist at all. How can savvy entrepreneurs mitigate this risk??
Planning experts note recurring product development problems. These issues consistently contribute to product failure, regardless of industry. These include:
Fortunately, you can solve all of these problems with one solution: an evidence-based product development process. A company increases its odds of product success when it standardizes its product development process.?
Critically, a business needs to use accurate data to establish this process. One useful information-synthesis sheet is a Product Requirements Document (PRD). As your business organizes a product development method, a PRD empowers you to standardize and streamline.?
What Is a Product Requirements Document?
A Product Requirements Document (PRD) is a single-page record. It articulates a team's goals and purpose for a product under development. It also includes elements that streamline the product development process, while maintaining a degree of agility.?
Engineers, designers, and developers in an array of industries use PRDs--including those in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NASA calls requirements "the?necessary functions and features" of a product or apparatus.
An effective PRD empowers a development team to define a proposed product's functions and features. The team determines these elements through an agile product development process.
Within this process, the PRD is an iterative document. Developers continually define and refine the product's requirements as they adapt to market changes.
Why Write a PRD??
A useful PRD cultivates a shared understanding of a product's purpose. All development and marketing team members stay on the same page when they work from the PRD.
An iterative PRD can also break developers away from the linear-thinking trap. The document is?designed to start lean, then grow throughout the process. Developers keep adaptability at the forefront when growth is built into the document.?
Finally, a PRD empowers teams to plan effectively for the development process. To write the document, engineers must identify requirements for resources that empower flexibility. So, the developers gather data about the market, resources, and current technological capacities.
When the team undertakes PRD-writing, it prepares them to?develop products with agility. This process alone makes PRD valuable.??
PRD: Solution Not Map
Think about the PRD as a solution, not a map. This document clarifies what the product will be, how it will work, and what problems the product will solve.
The PRD does not spell out how to fund, design, manufacture, or distribute the product. It is better to make these decisions after the team finalizes the PRD.
Six Critical PRD Components
So far, we've established why a PRD is a useful tool that can mitigate the risk of product failure. To recap, a good PRD:
Effective PRDs do this by conveying critical information to developers in a single, concise document. To write a useful PRD, a developer needs to incorporate six critical sets of information.?
1. Product Process and Status
The document must answer core questions about the process. Answer questions like:
The PRD relays process and status information in 1-2 sentences. Alternately, the writer might present this information in a box or chart at the top of the page.??
2. Product Release Goals
The PRD states the purpose of your product's release. It also notes how this goal feeds into broader company goals. You might derive this summary from the third information set.
3. Market Research (Background)
The PRD relates the product's value proposition. Developers glean this information from market research.
The PRD writer might use a Marketing Requirements Document (MRD) to develop this information set. The research answers questions like:
Writers might answer these questions using a?context diagram. You can also relate this information with a flow map, one-sentence summaries, or a bullet-point synopsis in the PRD.?
4. Metrics (Quantitative Analysis Criteria)
The PRD defines what success is for the product. Express a vision of success from the user's perspective (i.e. the product solves the customer's problem successfully). Indicate how to recognize the product's success in the market.
The PRD also defines metrics. It describes how to measure the product's success in different use cases. The PRD writer might also note how successful competing products are by these metrics, and how your company's existing solutions measure up.
5. UI/UX Design
The bulkiest data set conveys the product's intended components and their respective functions. It also describes proposed design elements.
In this section, the writer often notes how each element contributes to the product's aesthetic and user interface. In the same vein, this PRD segment conveys how each part?impacts user experience.
The initial, lean PRD draft does not include specification minutia. Instead, engineers can use this draft section to design mockups and prototypes.
6. User Problems (Quality Analytics)
The PRD summarizes potential users' current problems. This includes pain points users experience with current solutions.
These problems drive the company's approach to?further user experience research.?Team members can revise this section of the PRD as they learn more about the qualities of the customer's experience.
Remember: the first draft is a lean document. The PRD is not the place to detail exactly?how?the product solves the user's problems. It merely identifies the users' problems, then notes them in plain language.?
PRD vs MRD
If you are in the pre-development stage, your company will get more out of an MRD than a PRD. The fundamental PRD meaning, "product requirements document," indicates that the report describes a future product.?
In the pre-development stage, you don't yet have a preliminary concept or product proposal. To generate useful product concepts, you must analyze the market.?
As market analysts research the current state of your industry, they might compile a Market Requirements Document (MRD). The MRD answers questions like:
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The MRD primarily relates information about the market. It only touches lightly on product-centered questions. Marketing analysts typically aren't product developers.
Developers and engineers can use the MRD to jumpstart product ideation. As they move from ideas to concepts, they can begin the product development process--and write a PRD.
Create Your One-Page PRD
It's smart to start with a lean, one-page PRD. A concise first draft enables clarity and focus.
Developers can easily move from one step of the process to the next with an uncluttered vision of their end goal. Your team can create a PRD in eight steps.?
1. Enable Collaboration
First, enable collaboration. Set up the PRD in a place all relevant team members can access it easily. Developers, engineers, marking, and sales team members will all benefit if they can easily reference the document.
To set the stage for iterations, use a document platform that makes it easy to create variants. The ideal document location lets approved team members edit the document as they go.
The program may also empower questions, comments, or suggestions. These options can?improve collaboration. You can choose from a multitude of shared document programs to create the PRD, including:
These programs all offer cloud document storage, and each enables invitation-only collaboration. Some are free, while others require a monthly paid subscription.?
2. Clarify Document Structure
After choosing a document program, the PRD writers should choose a structure. The PRD writers might design their own format. Or, they may decide to start from a template.
There's no standard PRD document structure. So, choose a structure that conveys information clearly and suits your brand's aesthetic. Make sure the format can relate to the six information sets.??
3. Summarize Purpose
Summarize the purpose of the product. Make sure everyone is on the same page about the purpose before you write it down.
Then, articulate the product's goals precisely. At this stage, establish which metrics you'll use to measure how well the product meets its goal. Consider diverse metrics.?
As you hone in on the product's purpose, talk about the relevant background and market information. Note your assumptions about users inherent in your product goals. Include these notes in the PRD.
4. Define Features and Function
Engineers, developers, and market analysts should collaborate at this stage. Use the MRD and established product goals to conceptualize the product's components.?
Ascertain how each feature might look, function, and?impact the user experience. Note all the assumptions built into these concepts.
Summarize the features and functions. But, don't delineate the components' specs at this stage.?
5. Set Release Requirements
After you've established the product's goals and conceptualized its features, it's time to set release requirements. Release requirements answer one question: what is the?minimum viable product?
What must features must the product prototype have to be useable? These are the prototype requirements.
When you reach these, you're at the stage in the product development process that lets you run initial user tests. Then you can get user feedback and revise the product.?
Then, discuss which additional features are mandatory for wide release. Record both the prototype requirements and the release requirements in the PRD.??
6. Establish Timeline and Parameters
With the end goal in sight, work backward to create a timeline. As you work, identify constraints and pre-requisites. Pre-requisites drive the order of events; these are tasks that you can only begin when a specific prior task is complete.
Your team can do some tasks simultaneously. But, be aware of time and budget constraints. Develop the timeline based on the length of time tasks take, not a pre-determined date.?
7. Note Further Resources
After you create the timeline, take a step back. What questions does your team still need to answer? This might be information about the customer's persona, their problems, or general market questions.?
As you answer these questions throughout the process, connect this information to the PRD. Use the footer to note resources in other documents. Or, create an "Additional Resources" page.?
8. Share PRD Draft for Feedback
You've created the PRD draft. Now, share the document with stakeholders. Solicit their feedback.
Stakeholder feedback drives iterations. Let the document grow and change.?
PRD Examples and Templates
Companies use PRDs internally. So, there's no single standard document format, even within a single industry.
But, you can examine a Product Requirements Document example from a few different sources. Any of these might inspire a format that works for your company.
HUD Product Requirements Document Template
In the United States, government departments mandate specific requirements documents if a business wants to submit its product for approval. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)?offers this template.
Note that HUD calls this a Functional Requirements Document (FRD). This is longer and more detailed than the initial, single-page PRD.
It encompasses security assessments and an environmental impact report, which are HUD-specific. These reports are not part of most PRDs.??
MIT Product Requirements Document Example
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology publishes free educational resources. In this publication,?The Fundamentals of System Engineering, Dr. Olivier de Weck explains product development methods. Within this booklet, Weck:
MIT's free resources empower many developers. Another MIT resource is this?simple Product Requirements Document template. While it is software-specific, you can easily adapt it to address concerns relevant to your industry.?
Full-Service Product Development Experts
At Niezek, we've mastered the art of product development. We'll take your Product Requirements Document and jumpstart the build process.
No PRD? No problem! We develop software from the ground up. Our software solutions serve clients all over the world.?What can we do for you??