product requirements document (PRD) template
even the best product strategy doesn't matter unless you can translate it into an actionable PRD (i.e. product spec)
Here’s the product requirements document template (editable Google doc) that I use every day. I’ve refined it throughout my career as a product manager in big tech and startups. It includes the best practices I’ve learned from mentors and product leaders along the way :)
Feature name
Key contacts & dates
PM
Eng
UX
PMM
Status: <PRD draft>
Experiment start date
Experiment end date
Target 100% rollout date
Key links
Design
Prototype
GTM plan
Experiment ID
Data dashboard
[GIF / screenshot]
Vision
PRFAQ: What’s the ideal headline about this launch?
What are we building?
Describe the key capabilities of this feature.
Who is it for?
Who is the target persona?
Why are we building it?
What problems does it solve? What does user and market research show?
“As a <user>, I want to … so that I can …”
Why now?
What’s the strategic value of building this now, rather than later? Is this critical, foundational component that unlocks other important initiatives?
How are we measuring success?
What key metric are we hoping to change? How will this impact the key metric? Why are we confident that this will impact the key metric?
Experiment plan:
Segmentation: Which segment will see the control vs treatment?
E.g., User tenure, exclude users in [x] experiment
Schedule: What’s the rollout schedule? Dates for 5%, 10%, 25%, 50%, 100%
Metric: What key metric are we measuring?
Experiment ID
Results:
Results date or expected results date:
Met expectations or Did not meet expectations: [increased X by Y, stat sig]
Recommended next steps:
Next step. Explanation / justification.
Table 1. Experiment results.
Principles
What are some beliefs and core values that guide decision making?
Definitions
Define key terms.
What are the core components of the user experience?
Event Instrumentation
As a PM, I want to understand x…explain what events you are tracking and how those events align with the story you are trying to tell
Dependencies
Future vision
Explain how building this feature progresses towards your future vision.
Plan out multiple phases of feature development.
Risks and mitigations
What are the key strategic, organizational, operational, financial and technical risks?
What are the mitigations?
What do we not know?
Appendix
What would be distracting or unnecessary to include in the body of the document, but would be helpful for reference?
Appendix A: Related documents
Survey or research results, customer interviews, etc.
Appendix B: Competitor examples
In what ways are we at parity with competitors? What are we intentionally doing differently?