Documentation… is there anything else related to software product development that so few people enjoy creating but so many rely on?

Yeah… I didn’t think so.

One of the more controversial documents is the Product Requirements Document (PRD). Done correctly, it helps your team build a shared understanding of the solution you’re trying to build.

Done poorly, it can be an epic (pun intended) failure that finds its way into the trash can.

The prevalence of agile approaches has led many teams to believe you don’t need a PRD because you have user stories. Except it’s really easy to lose the forest for the trees if you only rely on user stories.

It turns out that PRD’s may still be helpful, as long as you approach them in the right way.

This week I’m sharing some perspectives on PRD’s and when they may still make sense.

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Product Requirements Document (PRD): A Guide for Product Managers

Every product manager, at some point in her career, has written and read a product requirements document (PRD) in some form.

As unpopular as you might think the PRD is, there are enough product teams still using them. Hence, it is critical to understand its importance.

Sid Arora answers: “What is a product requirements document?” and “Why is it important?” And then shares good practices to create a comprehensive PRD.

Using product requirement documents and user stories appropriately without creating a mess.

You’ve written two dozen user stories in Trello for a new feature. With each new story, it’s becoming harder to see the forest from the trees. So you link, tag, and organize your stories. But this doesn’t give you the bird's-eye view. In frustration, you decide to perform a reorganization via a Google doc. Unbeknownst, you’ve created a maintenance nightmare. With two places for information, how do you keep your user stories and the Google doc in sync with changes? What information should be in one versus the other? Worse, when something is out of sync, which source is the truth?

You ask yourself:

• Have I created a product requirements document (PRD) by accident with my Google doc?
• Should I be writing a PRD or adding more details into my user story?
• What’s the difference between a PRD and a user story?
• Isn’t PRD used in the waterfall model of software development?
• Have I created some abomination of Agile + waterfall (i.e., Agilefall?)

Fear not. You’re not alone wrestling with these questions. To tackle your problems, you have to first understand the similarities and differences between product requirement document and user story. Shaw Li provides some insights.

Is the Product Requirements Document Dead?

Although there are organizations that still use traditional PRDs, many teams have moved to more agile development processes, and several have even thrown out the PRD entirely. As with many tools in the product management arsenal, the document has seen both strong adherents and detractors over the years. The Uservoice team looks at the PRD debate and explains both slides.

Product Requirements Document: Benefits, Tips & Examples

Your product is the centerpiece of your company. There wouldn’t be any business for you without your product.

While we are consistently making efforts to strive for product excellence, we may not always reach there. This is because product owners fail at the very roots.

You may often build a product based on the basic idea you have for it. Sometimes, you may just run iterations or give feature requests to your product team.

However, you cannot just wing something that forms the crux of your business.

A country’s constitution is essential for its laws and actions. And a product requirements document is necessary for product teams to develop products that gain success.

Pradeepa Somasundaram talks about what a product requirements document is, tips on how you can write one, and examples as a bonus!

Product Ops: Lessening the Need for Product Requirements Documents

As if we needed another reason to be enthusiastic about the rise of product operations, we have one. Implementing product ops at your company will reduce your team’s need to produce clunky, one-way communication vehicles like the product requirements document (PRD).

The team from Product Plan walks you through the ways product operations can help your company enhance conversation, collaboration, and alignment across your teams—and build better products.

Thanks for Reading

Thanks again for reading InsideProduct.

If you have any comments or questions about the newsletter, or there’s anything you’d like me to cover, just reply to this email.

Talk to you in a couple of weeks,

Kent J. McDonald
Founder | KBP.Media