Business Analysis Templates, Product Development

NEW TEMPLATE: Product Requirements Document (MS Office)

Posted on by Anthony James
30
Jul

Today, we’re all working on projects. And most of those projects concern products. If you work in IT, finance, even Government, you’ll have noticed that the rise of mobile apps and the shift towards a more product-driven development culture are increasingly intertwined.

As consumers increasingly lean towards mobile devices and apps to use on-the-go, the demand to develop niche products to address this demand continues to rise.

This means that if you work in product development, or plan to move into this space, understanding how to spec out your product is essential. Our product-driven feature-rich culture requires tools like Product Requirements Documents to help teams align on product vision, features, and success criteria before and during development.

So, where do you start?

Challenges when creating Product Requirements Documents (PRDs)

Three common problems product managers encounter when writing Product Requirements Documents (PRDs) include:

  1. Lack of specificity: Product managers struggle to articulate requirements in an unambiguous manner, leading to misinterpretations and potential issues during development.
  2. Scope creep: There’s pressure to include too many features or requirements, which expands the PRD making the project unfeasible within given time and resource constraints.
  3. Insufficient stakeholder input: Failing to gather comprehensive feedback from all parties (such as user stakeholders) leads to incomplete or misaligned requirements.

Getting started on Product Requirements Documents

With that said, here’s some things to consider when writing your first PRD:

1. Product Overview

  • Briefly describe the product and its main purpose
  • Identify the target users
  • Explain the problem it solves or value it provides

2. Goals and Objectives

  • List specific, measurable goals for the product
  • Outline how success will be measured

3. Features and Requirements

  • Detail the core functionalities
  • Prioritize features (e.g., must-have, nice-to-have, out of scope)
  • Include any technical constraints or dependencies

4. User Stories

  • Describe how users will interact with the product
  • Include scenarios that illustrate key features. More granular user stories may help with this.

5. Non-Functional Requirements

6. Assumptions and Constraints

  • List any assumptions made about the project or users
  • Note any limitations (budget, time, technology)

7. Timelines and Milestones

  • Provide a high-level project schedule
  • When writing your product requirements, aim to be concise and ‘super’ specific.

Download your Product Requirements Document template

To help you with this, we’ve created a new Product Requirements Document (PRD) template.

Here are some of the ways it will help you craft your first set of PRDs:

1. Consistency

  • Ensure all PRDs within your department follow the same format
  • Make documents easier to read and understand across different projects

2. Timesaving

  • Reduce the time spent on formatting and structure
  • Allow team members to focus on content rather than document layout

3. Completedness

  • Serve as a checklist to ensure all necessary information is included
  • Ensure important aspects of the product are not overlooked

4. Onboarding

  • Help new team members understand the expected format and content
  • Facilitate faster learning of the PRD creation process

5. Stakeholder Alignment

  • Set expectations for what information will be provided
  • Improve the document review and approval processes

The Table of Contents are listed here:

Template Details

The Product Requirements Document (PRD) template pack includes the following files:

  • 1 x MS Word document – Product Requirements Document
  • 1 x MS Excel worksheet – Product Requirements Tracking

File Format

  • MS Word .docx
  • MS Excel.xlsx

Page Count

  • MS Word document – 48 pages (including instructions to use the document)
  • MS Excel worksheet – 2 sheets

Download Process

After you pay for the item, please wait a moment for the webpage to display the download link. Click this link to save the zip file to your computer. We’ll also send you an email containing the download link.

You can download the Product Requirements Document (PRD) here.

Next Steps

Over the coming weeks, we’ll publish a series of articles on how to write Product Requirements Documents. If you’re new to product development, I’d suggest to sign up to the newsletter so you get the new articles in your inbox.

Anthony James