What questions should a product requirements document answer?
I am temporarily putting on a marketing hat and creating a product requirement document (PRD). My first step was to create a template based on a skeleton in a Wikipedia article, together with some valuable details from my colleague Chris. I attempted to make it a bit more “agile” by using “user stories” instead of “features” for the functional specification.
As I fill in this template, I suspect I will need to make some changes. But here is what I have so far.
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[product name] Product Requirements
> > This document describes the requirements of […] without regard to implementation.
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Purpose and scope
[what is the problem we are solving?]
> > [product concept]
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Technical
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Business Objective
[how much money/profit will we make]
> > [how much resources will this take]
> > [how does this fit into strategic roadmap/company goals]
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Stakeholder identification
[partner interactions]
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Market assessment and target demographics
[market and/or product problem]
> > [target market]
> > [Internationalization requirements]
> > [user profile][customer profile]
> > [branding]
> > [what is competition doing in this space]
> > [how can we differentiate/compete … what is the future] [is it "me too"]
> > [Actual text to be used in marketing]
> > [How to sell … marketing plan]
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Product overview and user scenarios
[how the user is going to interact and why]
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Assumptions and External Dependencies
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Requirements
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functional requirements
[what product should do]
> > [prioritized user stories … best bang for the buck … difficulty vs. quality vs. time to implement]
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usability requirements
> > [Actual help text to be provided]
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technical requirements
[technology problem] [what technology do we require]
> > [what technology is best in class to solve the problem -- how to measure -- is it best for our user in ease of use, time of execution, repeatability stability, quality]
> > [security] [privacy]
> > [network -- HTTP, HTTPS?, SMTP?]
> > [platform] [coding language]
> > [integration] [related features/site interactions]
> > [client -- which versions of what browsers? screen size? mobile?]
> > [future upgrades] [extensibility]
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environmental requirements
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support requirements
[customer service]
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interaction requirements
how the software should work with other systems
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legal requirements
[legal impact]
> > [actual text of terms of service]
> > [actual text of privacy policy]
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Constraints
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Workflow plans, timelines and milestones
> > [Steps/phases and rollout plan]
> > [undo plan]
> > [operations impact]
> > [financial impact]
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Evaluation plan and performance metrics
> > [Define the goal. How will this be measured? What is success?]
> > [performance]
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Revision History
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… 1 Template copied Eamonn