Product Requirements Document

What is a Product Requirements Document?

The Product Requirement Document (PRD) is a resource that defines the product, its purpose, market, features and functionality. It is traditionally used in waterfall development to communicate the intent and direction of the product to the wider development team.,A variation of the PRD is also used during Agile to define the product vision and clearly list out what is included in the product or release.

What goes into a PRD?

Creating the PRD can be a tedious task for any product manager, and it can be even more difficult for internal teams to digest this massive resource. Since  the purpose of the document is to clearly communicate all the details of what needs to go into the product to design and development teams, it needs to include these elements:

• Objectives: Why is the product being built and how will it benefit the company?
• Features: Which features will be included in the product? Each feature should include a description of the feature, the justification for creating it, and a use case.
• User Experience Flow: What is the vision for the user experience and what are the general guidelines for how it will flow? 
• System and Technographic Requirements: Which environments need to be supported and which products are on the compatibility or white lists?
• Assumptions: What assumptions can be made about the user or their other technology products?‍
• Constraints: Are there any limitations for the implementation of the system, and what are they?