Jason Nazar, co-founder and CEO of Docstoc (docstoc.com), explains the best way to put together the PRD. The main function of your site is conveyed by the PRD which is explained by Jason.
- PRD= product requirements document conveys functionality of your site
- Use an outline form to break the layout into manageable sections
- An organzied PRD helps with strong issue spotting
- Create IF/THEN situations for user interactions
The basic building block of an online product is the Requirements Document. And it’s often referred to as a PRD, Product Requirements Document. And it’s the core functionality of a website in the document that explains all that user interaction.
And so, what’s the best way to put together a requirements document? I simply do it in an outlined form and different people will have different methodologies. But I like to think of it as an outline and there is a section and a subsection and a sub subsection. And so, you can think of main section as a page. So, each main page of your online product is a section - the home page, the contact us page, the user interaction page. And then, the key functionality interactions of that page should become sub bullet points. And then the things that happen within those interactions are sub bullet points as well.
So ideally, what you’ve had when you’ve completed your requirements document is depending upon how big and complex your online product it. Sometimes is 10, 15, 20, 25 page document. Then, an outline form with topics, subtopics and sub subtopics explains all the interaction and functionality of the website.
And what you really need to do to make sure that it’s a really good Requirements Document PRD. The key thing is to do great issue spotting. This is actually a technique that’s thought in law school when students are reading cases, but they try to teach law school students to do is to be able to read a case and pull out the key issues. And that’s an essence on what you’re trying to do with the PRD. You’re trying to imagine every single interaction that you’re users will go through and every issue that could come up.
And the key thing that you want to do is you want to think of if-then situations. If my user does this, then what will happen? And then, if they do that, what will happen after that? And you’ll often find that there maybe 3, 4, 5 layers of an if-then scenario just on one single interaction that your user has. So for example, on a registration page, what happens if a user already has a log in and password. Then, what happens if they put in a wrong log in and password? And so, you want to think through the different levels of all these situations and putting those together in one complete document, your PRD is going to be the basic core building block for your online product.