Product Management During Product Definition Phase
From Product Management School
The Product Managers role during the Product Definition phase is to ensure that the requirements documents are complete. They need to be ready in order to be baselined prior to the Development phase starting.
Thus the most important focus during this phase is on the drawing up of the two documents that specify the product in detail:
- MRD – Market Requirements Document
- PRD – Product Requirements Document
MRD – Market Requirements Document
The Market Requirements Document is written up when a market need is identified. It will express the requirements for a new product development or product enhancement. The document is solely based on the customer or potential customers and market needs that have been identified in relation to the product concept. This document is vital to ensure that the voice of the customer is heard during the product design process.
The document contains information on the following topics:
- A full description of the product or enhancement being recommended.
- Market Segmentation and Target Market analysis identifying who the potential customers will be.
- Competitive Analysis giving a full breakdown of the competitors in the market and their products.
- An analysis of the proposed product describing how it differentiates itself from the competition.
Product Requirement Document (PRD)
It is the Product Managers responsibility to author this document. The document describes the functional requirements, non-functional requirements and the constraints on the product from a business, customer and market perspective. In order to generate the content for this document all the stakeholders have to be consulted with to ensure that all requirements are documented. There is a well-documented and robust process laid out that can be followed. Following the process will ensure that the resulting PRD or Software Requirements Specification (SRS) stands up to purpose. The main stages in this process are:
- Elicitation
- Analysis
- Specification
- Validation
- Management of the process
It is an iterative process that ends with the resulting document being validated and signed off by the stakeholders. The document is used as the control to manage the development. It is important that the document be cohesive, verifiable, unambiguous and traceable so that:
- All stakeholders understand what is going to be delivered.
- It can be translated into a Product Specification Document by the development team.
- That is can be used to enforce bi-directional traceability of the requirements. This helps to eliminate scope creep and the inclusion of unnecessary functionality. It also helps ensure that the agreed product is what is actually delivered.
- It serves as the basis for several other processes down the line, for example testing.
Like many other documents we have seen the Product Requirements Document is only as up-to-date as it was in the moment in time that it was written. After it has been baselined it becomes subject to strict version control and any changes to the requirements have to go through a separate change control process for rejection or approval.
Once all the documents are ready they are then presented to whichever body the organization uses to green light projects moving forwards to the Development Phase.
