Product Requirements Document (PRD) Template

What is a PRD?

A PRD is a living guide written by a Product Manager used to communicate and outline what they are building, who it is for, and how it benefits the end-user. It also serves as a guide for business and technical teams to help develop, launch, and market the product.

Note: the following content has been validated by Gaurav Hardikar, Head of Consumer Product HomeLight

Start here!

Instructions

1. Read and understand what a PRD is here.
2. Take a look at the PRD example below.
3. Scroll to the next page to create your own PRD.
4. Use the checklist at the end of this document to make sure you covered all the topics in a PRD.
5. To get an insight into how seasoned PMs go about building their PRDs check out the webinar:
   Creating a PRD by Flipkart Group Product Manager, Raja Mukesh Krishna Balakrishnan.
6. Share this document with stakeholders, get feedback, and update!

PRD Title: PRD for Feature X

Author: Name of PM

Team: [List team members]

PM Epic: [Insert link to Project Management tool epic (on JIRA or similar tool)]

Status of PRD: Backlog

One Pager

Prior to writing your PRD document, present a One Pager to Executives to get buy-in from Executives before you prioritize. In the one-pager, you should describe Overview, Problem, Objectives, Constraints, and Use Cases. Use this One Pager to begin the project, then construct the PRD over the course of the project until lock.

Overview

An overview that states what product/feature the project is about, it’s important, and the overall key points your team needs to know.

Problem

Your problem statement is a description that explains the current situation and its related customer pain points and wants. This is a high-level statement that clearly states why this is a problem and explains why it is important to your business.

Objectives

The broad brush goals of this project. What would success look like if you solve the customer and company needs you are aiming to address?

1. Objective 1
2. Objective 2
3. Objective 3

Constraints

Roadblocks, realities, and dependencies that limit how ambitious you can be with this project. Whether it’s time, money, or engineering capability, be clear about the limits of this project.

1. Constraint 1
2. Constraint 2
3. Constraint 3

Persona

Who are the target personas for this product, and which is the key persona?

Use Cases

Instances where various personas will use the product, in context.

Scenario 1

Scenario 2

Scenario 3

PRD

When you’ve locked in your One Pager, build out your PRD. Use the finalized One Pager and the following.

Features In

These are the distinct, prioritized features along with a short explanation of why this feature is important. Briefly outline the scope, the goals, and use case.

• Feature 1

• Feature 2

• Feature 3

Features Out

What features have you explicitly decided not to do and why?

• Feature 1

• Feature 2

• Feature 3

Design - (optional)

Include any needed early sketches, and throughout the project, link to the actual designs once they’re available.

Technical Considerations - (optional)

Link to engineering technical approach document.

Success Metrics

What are the success metrics that indicate you’re achieving your internal goals for the project? How will you measure success? You can use any goal-setting and tracking system you prefer (OKRs, KPIs, etc).

Note: Link to Analytics requirements and approach document.

GTM Approach

What’s the product messaging that your  marketing department will use to describe this product to existing and new customers? How do you plan to launch this product to the market with marketing and sales teams?

Note: Link to a larger GTM brief if available.

Open Issues

What factors do you still need to figure out? What problems may arise and how do you plan on addressing them?

Q&A

What are common questions about the product along with the answers you’ve decided? This is a good place to note key decisions.

Feature Timeline and Phasing

PRD Checklist:

Here’s a list of topics you must include in your PRD:

Example PRD

PRD Title: PRD for Feature X

Author: Natalie PM - (Sign off)

Team: [List team members]

PM Epic: [Insert link to Project Management tool epic (on JIRA or similar tool)]

Status of PRD: Backlog

PM Epic: [Insert link]

One Pager for Feature X

Overview

The Mobile App has two main goals, to provide a fantastic picture discovery and viewing experience for camera owners and non-camera owners alike and to provide added value to the camera owner (value that comes from having a portable computer with a fast processor, a nice screen, and an Internet connection).

This vision will continue through with Product X, taking advantage of the smartphone’s cellular radio (among other things) for camera owners and by continuing to be a great place to experience pictures.

Note: This document describes a roadmap to Product X’s time, not the scope of a massive release at Product X’s release. We will want to identify key release milestones/priorities and plan development around them.

Objectives

1. Be a great place to discover and view pictures, regardless as to if you’re a camera owner or not.
2. Provide extra value to camera owners.
3. Support our ecosystem goals.

GTM Approach

The Mobile App provides a convenient way to share on the go, control your camera remotely, or simply see the latest amazing pictures in 3D.

Success Metrics

TBD (It’s OK that these aren’t clearly defined yet!  We’ll figure them out as we discuss the product with the other teams)

Scenarios

Non-Owner Discovering Pictures

Hans is thinking about buying a camera, having seen a demo at his local Ringfoto store, but he’s unsure.  He downloads the app, now available in German fortunately, as he thinks about buying the camera.  In it, he can easily sit back and watch a slideshow of pictures play or interrupt them and interact with them.  Thanks to geotagging, he can even see what other camera owners are shooting in his town.  This browsing experience is quite pleasant, and the pictures look great on his iPad.

He goes into the app’s learn section and sees a list of videos he can play to teach him how to use the camera better, but unfortunately they’re all in English.

However, Hans has had enough fun playing with the app that it pushes him towards buying a camera.

Camera Owner Remote Control and Sharing

Julie bought Product X because she had a lot of fun with the first edition camera, and now she’s having fun thinking of new ways to use Product X.  She periodically gets a bald eagle in her yard, and she’s been trying to figure out how to get a great picture of it.  

Eventually, she rigs up a system where Product X is plugged in to a power outlet, set to never turn off,  continuously broadcasting its Wi-Fi network, and sitting outside near a perch she rigged up for the eagle.  Then, she has her iPhone with her at all times.

When she sees the eagle outside, she gets her iPhone out and connects to her camera’s Wi-Fi network.  She switches over to live view mode and sees the eagle in the palm of her hand.  She’s able to tap to set focus and even zoom the lens remotely to get the shot she wants, and when she taps the shutter, the camera fires.  

She continues shooting, and when the eagle flies away, she switches to share mode.  She quickly finds her favorite shot and shares it right from the app to Twitter, adding, “The eagle has landed!”

The next time she launches the app, she has a notification that Hans liked her picture and started following her.  Although she received far more replies on Twitter itself, she’s still happy that people are discovering her pictures.

Sharing Product X Pictures On the Go

Sam’s using a test unit of Product X and takes a shot he wants to send to the IQ team to look at.  He pulls up the mobile app on his Nexus 4 and puts it into a mode where it essentially acts like a radio for Product X.

Now, he can interact with Product X on its own screen, select pictures there, and send them from Product X to their final destination, all without using the app’s UX.  This makes it easy to keep his phone in his pocket while sending files from Product X as he shoots.  If his camera were in a bag, he could’ve used the app to browse, select, and send his thumbnails, but in this case, it was more convenient for him to go the other way.

SDK Timelapse App

Topher’s a bit of a hacker who likes coming up with new things to do with his camera.  When we released an iOS SDK, he first set out to add support for our pictures to his Stuck on Earth app.  He had to do some extra work to datamine our site and get the geotags into a format he can understand, but he can now get a picture’s URL and location.

With that bit of data and Player bundled into an SDK, it’s trivial for him to add support for our picture format to his app, and our pictures now appear side-by-side with standard, 2D pictures.

But Topher didn’t stop there. He’s been interested in flower bloom sequences for a while, and it would be pretty awesome in picture. Using the camera control park of the SDK, he rigs up a timelapse app and connects it to Product X.  It’s not particularly sophisticated, simply making sure the camera hits a specific exposure value with each shot and fires at a specified interval, but the results are what matter.  If we’re lucky, maybe he’ll post the source for others to use!

Features In

[M] denotes minimum viable experience requirement for Product X

(Note: Many of these features will have their own separate specs with more detailed prioritization and requirement breakdown.  This doc is keeping an overall higher-level view of prioritization by just saying must have or not.  In general, the categories are in priority order with the minimum requirements within each taking the highest priority.)

Viewing

• [M] iOS 8-native experience for iOS
• [M] See pictures as large as possible on each device
• [M] Autoplay support for animation loops built in the desktop software
• [M] Content discovery mechanism (Recent/popular streams?  Random picture view?  This will be part of the 2.0 iOS 8 redesign, and we should keep some consistency with the website, too)
• Way to see an activity stream from people you follow
• Search that also searches keywords/metadata/comments
• Way to save and view your own pictures offline
• Map view for different collections (yours and other streams)
• Way to see pictures taken nearby

General

• [M] Localization (match Product X)
• [M] Android port (most likely by an outsourced firm)
• Remote control of camera operation and live view
• Way to act as a relay radio so that you can share via Product X’s UX rather than the app (but still support sharing via the app)

Community

• Followers
• Comments

Social Network Integration

• [M] Post to Twitter on share
• Post to Pinterest on share
• Re-share to each network
• Support card metadata in Twitter to load our app for our picture links

Sharing

• [M] Way to set a specific animation loop on a picture you’re sharing
• Share to a specific or new album rather than Mobile Uploads

SDK

• [M] Player that can load files from a specified URL
• [M] Scriptable player (e.g., go to this view)
• [M] Versioned and compatible with various file format iterations
• Camera control APIs

Slideshows

• Play an album
• Play a stream of pictures
• Airplay support

Learn Content

• Tutorial videos

Features Out

• Custom Streams: we probably won’t have the back-end for this ready by when Product X ships, so it’s a non-feature for the mobile app for now.
• Direct file sharing support: there are so many ways to share files, including just taking a card out and handing it to someone else, it doesn’t seem important to have AirDrop support, for example.  If we want wireless import, presumably there are more cross-platform ways to do it (we had this working in an old version of the desktop software once).

Open Issues

None yet!

Q&A

Drop your questions here:

Feature Timeline and Phasing

More Resources!

Follow Elly Newell, Senior Product Manager at Amazon on how to write great Product Requirements!

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