A PRD (Product Requirements Document) states the purpose, scope and requirements of a product or feature. It explains the problem, the target users, the goals, the functional and non-functional requirements and the criteria for success, so design, engineering and stakeholders share one understanding.
Why it matters
A written PRD reduces miscommunication and gives the team something to estimate, challenge and test against. It records decisions and what is deliberately out of scope, which helps limit feature creep. Formats vary: some teams write long specifications, others keep a short one-page brief linked to user stories and designs in an agile workflow. A PRD describes what and why, leaving how to engineering.
Example
Feature: Email alerts for downtime
Problem: Users learn about outages too late.
Goal: 80% of monitored sites have an alert contact within 30 days.
Requirements:
- Send an alert after 2 consecutive failed checks
- Allow multiple recipients
Out of scope: SMS in v1
Metric: median time to notice outage under 5 minutesCommon mistakes
- Prescribing the technical solution instead of the problem.
- Omitting success metrics and non-goals.
- Writing it once and never updating it as decisions change.
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