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.
[product name] Product Requirements
This document describes the requirements of [...] without regard to implementation.
Purpose and scope
[what is the problem we are solving?]
[product concept]
Technical
Business Objective
[how much money/profit will we make]
[how much resources will this take]
[how does this fit into strategic roadmap/company goals]
Stakeholder identification
[partner interactions]
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]
Product overview and user scenarios
[how the user is going to interact and why]
Assumptions and External Dependencies
Requirements
functional requirements
[what product should do]
[prioritized user stories ... best bang for the buck ... difficulty vs. quality vs. time to implement]
ID Priority User Story (Card) Conversation Confirmation
FOO MUST ... FooConversation? FooTest?
BAR SHOULD ... BarConversation? BarTest?
BAZ MAY ... BazConversation? BazTest?
usability requirements
[Actual help text to be provided]
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]
environmental requirements
support requirements
[customer service]
interaction requirements
how the software should work with other systems
legal requirements
[legal impact]
[actual text of terms of service]
[actual text of privacy policy]
Constraints
Workflow plans, timelines and milestones
[Steps/phases and rollout plan]
[undo plan]
[operations impact]
[financial impact]
Evaluation plan and performance metrics
[Define the goal. How will this be measured? What is success?]
[performance]
Revision History
... 1 Template copied Eamonn