While this has probably been discussed to death before, it’s important to reiterate them during as you build the product otherwise it might get lost in the development shuffle. Make sure you discuss the user problems (not solutions) that must be addressed, the target demographic (companies, customers, users) and various use cases for each demographic. The engineers, designers, and UX folks are the ones designing solutions for the product - don’t piss them off by making the PRD a recipe rather than a guideline. In each section, remember to be clear on the problem being solved versus the solution otherwise you may lead the team to make incorrect assumptions. According to Cagan, the PRD’s goal is to explain the “What”, not the “How”. Marty Cagan, Partner at the Silicon Valley Product Group, explains the four core sections of a PRD - defining purpose, describing features, setting release criteria, sketching rough timing - which we’ve adapted for our purposes below. Good product managers not only keep PRDs up-to-date on a daily or weekly basis, but they view the entire PRD process as ongoing - the document is never truly complete, it simply evolves as the team iterates. Source: Product Hunt Product Requirements DocumentĪccording to Ben Horowitz and David Weiden, both notable venture capitalists, the PRD is the most important document a product manager maintains and should be the product Bible for marketing, design, and engineering. The technical details should be saved for the FSD. The product curation company Product Hunt shows that a PRD doesn’t need to be 100 pages long - just define the problems the product will solve with a general description of features (and plenty of mockups from previous stages). Because there’s been debate around the danger of excessive design thinking as well as its vital role in product leadership, the PRD helps balance the design team’s focus on usability and aesthetics against engineering’s functional concerns. The PRD is the heart of your product and serves as a living document for any designer, developer, or stakeholder to understand the status and purpose of the product.Īs illustrated above, failure to document requirements can lead to wildly different assumptions. In today’s Lean and Agile world, the PRD may be trimmed down (or simply represented by a prototype) so we’ll focus on just the core elements. Regardless, you should be able to ask any 5 team members about the overall purpose, features, release criteria, and timeline for the product and they should give you roughly the same answer. All companies are different, so some stages of product development can happen simultaneously (instead of sequential). Once you get to the “Build It” phase, the previous research and prototyping should give your team a high-level understanding of your product. The Anatomy of the Product Requirements Document Follow along, then use our free PRD template. In this piece, we’ll look at Product Hunt‘s product requirements document as a best practice and explain how to make it work for you. We understand that documentation doesn’t always equal a product, so that’s why we’ll just explore the essentials. While you do a lot of concepting during the research, analysis, and design phases, it’s now time to get to the heavy lifting. While the bulk of documentation is produced in the earlier stages, the implementation stage is one of the most crucial phases of the UX design process. How to Write a Painless Product Requirements Document
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |