Product requirements document

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A product requirements document (PRD) is used in product marketing to plan and execute new products. A PRD is often created after a marketing requirements document (MRD) has been written and been given approval by management, and is usually written before (or at least concurrently with) a technical requirements document. It is designed to allow people within a company to understand what a product should do and how it should work. PRDs are most frequently written for software products, but can be used for any type of product.

Typical components of a software product requirements document are:

Title & author Information
Purpose and scope, from both a technical and business perspective
Stakeholder identification
Market assessment and target demographics
Product overview and use cases
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 software should work with other systems)
Constraints
Workflow plans, timelines and milestones
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.

A PRD sometimes serves as a marketing requirements document as well, particularly if the product in small or uncomplicated.