The Living PRD: Enhancing Clarity and Collaboration
The PRD is not a static document.
It’s a living representation of the team’s progress.
The goal of the Product Requirements Document (PRD) is to provide clarity. So at each and every step, aim to increase the resolution of the image.
The best way to write a great PRD at each stage of the journey is to have a checklist. Check out the in-depth piece to know more.
𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝟭 — 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴
For big rocks for your next planning cycle, you should write the initial document that will become the PRD during the planning cycle itself.
The planning cycle is a time to really expand the scope of the problem space your product team considers.
For a whole quarter or half, you’ve been focused on a narrow set of features. So planning is the time to widen your problem space aperture once again.
𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝟮 — 𝗞𝗶𝗰𝗸𝗼𝗳𝗳
Once a problem has made its way through the planning phase and you feel confident in the problem to solve, it’s time to move on to the solution phase.
This is where the PRD gets detailed. The PM should put their thoughts together along with the paper sketches, but then the design team should be willing to blow the whole thing up.
Many PRDs end their evolution here. But: there are actually three more stages to go.
𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝟯 — 𝗦𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄
If the design team ends up just building a UI for the sketch the PM had, then the resulting PRD needs very little change.
But, ideally, the team should feel empowered to totally change the product solution. In such cases, you need to update the PRD.
That’s why it’s important to approach the PRD as living: it helps you explore the solution space, instead of just going with what leadership or the PM said in the second draft.
𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝟰 — 𝗟𝗮𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗵 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀
So after you’ve written the final steps of the PRD about risks and mitigation, the product should go through a final evolution.
Engineering should also get their hand on the PRD and comment the heck out of it.
Usually, this will bring up several areas that the team has to re-think.
𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝟱 — 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄
The final step is after you launch. Add a link at the top to your results review document.
If you actually built a big rock feature, then it will have moved the metrics and transformed the user experience. Many times in the future, someone in the company will be explaining the feature or looking into it.
For all those folks, it really helps to go back and understand why the feature was built. They’ll go to the PRD for that. So it’s great to also have a link to the results later.
𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗥𝗗 𝗰𝗮𝗻’𝘁 𝗯𝗲 𝗼𝗻𝗲-𝗮𝗻𝗱-𝗱𝗼𝗻𝗲.
