How to Write Your First Product Requirement Document

Plus the resources you need to get started

I’m writing a product requirement document (PRD) for the first time, and I’ll admit, I didn’t know quite where to start. But I did know one thing: I knew that I was skeptical of such a time-intensive, technical document.

Before I came back to grad school, I was a project manager on a marketing team using agile methodologies. I was indoctrinated into one scrum principle in particular: Employ minimally sufficient ceremony. In other words, document-centric, process-heavy, high-ceremony approaches cost time and effort. Only document what you need to document. Simplify or eliminate processes whenever possible. Get rid of unnecessary formality.

Yet here I am, tasked with writing a dense document that’s just there to reiterate what the prototype already demonstrates, right? Well, maybe. But I’ve learned two things.

First, minimally sufficient ceremony doesn’t mean no documentation ever, and when it comes to building a product, there does need to one source of truth that leaves little open to interpretation.

Second, as the product designer who’s been working on UX for months now, I forget what’s obvious in the clickable prototype vs. what’s still on a sketch somewhere, particularly when it…