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

Date Revision Change By Whom

... 1 Template copied Eamonn

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