What is a PRD?
A PRD, or product requirements document, says what you’re building, what you’re deliberately not building, and how you’ll know it worked. It doesn’t have to be thick. The good ones fit on a page, sitting next to a prototype that does the rest of the talking.
What goes in it
The problem, and who has it.
One or two sentences. If this part is fuzzy, nothing below it will be sharp.
What the first release does, step by step.
Walk through it the way a person would use it, start to finish.
What it deliberately doesn’t do.
This is the part people skip, and the part that saves the most arguments later.
How you’ll know it worked.
The number that should move, and by how much. Without it, “done” means “shipped.”
What you still don’t know.
Open questions, written down, so nobody pretends they’re settled.
What doesn’t belong
Every idea anyone has ever had for the product. Pixel-level design specs, which belong in the designs. And a solution nobody has tested yet, dressed up as a requirement. A PRD that tries to hold everything gets read by nobody.
Start from a story map
The easiest way to write one is to lay out what a person does, step by step, left to right, and stack the ideas for each step underneath. Then draw a line across for the first release: the thinnest slice that gets someone all the way through. The PRD describes what sits above that line.
Here is a student’s lunch as a backbone, with ideas under each step. Tap the cards that go in the first release. The rule: someone has to get all the way from arriving to eating, and it has to be small.
This is the same exercise that’s in the app.
- 1Arrive at lunch
- 2Order
- 3Pay
- 4Pick up
- 5Eat
First release above the dashed line · Later below
Why one page is enough
A long document feels thorough, and it hides the decisions. One page forces you to say what matters and what’s out. Anything a page can’t explain, a clickable prototype usually can, and people will look at a prototype.
Questions people ask
Who writes the PRD?
The product manager usually owns it, but it goes better when it’s written with the designer and an engineer in the room. They’ll spot the step that’s expensive to build or confusing to use before it’s on paper as a promise.
Is a PRD the same as user stories?
No. User stories are small pieces of work written from the user’s side, like “as a student, I want to pay before I reach the register.” A PRD is the page that says why those stories matter, which ones are in the first release and how you’ll know it worked.
Learn it by doing it
The app teaches this in Module 13, Map the Story.
Product Management is a course for curious teens, in five-minute lessons with something to play with in every one. Part I is free on iPhone, iPad and Android. No account, no ads.