CONCEPT-Tools

Requirements Specification

christof

The Product Requirements Specification (PRD) defines a product which a company is making, or the requirements for one or more new features for an existing product.

A PRD should generally define the problems that a product (or product feature) must solve, but should avoid defining the technical solution to those problems. This distinction allows engineers to use their expertise to provide the optimal solution to the requirements defined in the PRD.

 

 

 

 

 

Components of a product requirements document (PRD) are:

1. Title & author information

2. Purpose and scope, from both a technical and business perspective

3. Stakeholder identification

4. Market assessment and target demographics

5. Product overview and use cases

6. Requirements, including

  • functional requirements (e.g. what a product should do)
  • usability requirements
  • technical requirements (e.g. security, network, platform, integration, client)
  • environmental requirements
  • support requirements
  • interaction requirements (e.g. how the product should work with other systems)

7. Assumptions

8. Constraints

9. High level workflow plans, timelines and milestones (more detail is defined through aproject plan)

10. Evaluation plan and performance metrics

 

Not all PRDs have all of these components. In particular, PRDs for other types of products (manufactured goods, etc.) will eliminate the software-specific elements from the list above, and may add in additional elements that pertain to their domain, e.g. manufacturing requirements.

 

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_requirements_document