PRD which stands for ‘Product Requirements Document’ is way of pre-defining your product in a formatted, well-organized way ; so that your code doesn’t spill down into various files making it impossible to navigated and make sense of your product. In this blog I’ll also share my own personal experience and learnings from my first PRD on making an mobile app for a juice shop. So without getting frightened let’s get started.
What is a PRD?
A Product Requirements Document (PRD) is a detailed document that outlines the key objectives, features, functionalities, and constraints of a product that is being developed. It acts as a blueprint for the product development team, ensuring alignment among stakeholders and guiding the process of ideation to delivery.
Why should I use a PRD?
The benefits of making a PRD are:
- Clarity & Alignment :
It ensures all stakeholders, from developers to designers, understand the product vision and goals
A PRD helps prevent miscommunication or scope creep.
- Better Planning :
- Clearly defines the scope of the product, which allows for efficient resource allocation, cost estimation, and timeline planning.
- Reduced Risk :
Minimizes misunderstandings or incorrect assumptions by documenting expectations clearly.
Avoids rework due to poorly defined requirements.
- Focus on User Needs :
- Keeps the team focused on solving real user problems rather than building unnecessary features.
- Improved Collaboration :
- Acts as a single source of truth, enabling cross-functional teams to collaborate effectively.
- Accountability & Progress Tracking :
- Helps measure progress against defined milestones and ensures teams stay on track.
Key Components of a PRD
- Objective or Purpose :
- The purpose of making the product, the core reason for developing the product.
- Scope :
- The features, functionalities that the product will have in itself.
- Features & Requirements :
The functionalities that will be implemented in the product.
It is generally divide into two parts : P1 Features and P2 Features ; where the former are the core and most important features which are to be developed in the product and the later are the features which are less important and will be made later.
- User Stories or Use Cases :
- How the user will be able to use and access the product? What application features are available to him/her?
- Technical Requirements :
- The TECH-STACK and the tech frameworks/ libraries that will used in the product development.
- Design Requirements :
- How the UI/UX part of the product will look like?
- Success Metrics :
- What features and performance parameters will indicate whether the product or feature achieves its intended goals.
- Timeline :
- The estimated timeline of completing the set tasks and product delivery.
My Experience From My First PRD
Breaking my comfort and fear barriers I too wrote my first PRD though very basic and fundamental lacking touch of other professional product developers; I got a fair idea of what to think before a product is developed; the various facets, conditions, constraints, ideas that go into creating a product. Through a PRD I learnt a documented way to making listing all the necessary categories for making a product. Through this experience I have opened to writing PRD which I am gonna continue in the future.