Five Tips for Effective Product Requirements

by Don Vendetti

The primary customer for the Product Requirements document is your R&D team, who must clearly understand the problem they are trying to solve, and for whom.  The document may also define requirements or deliverables for other departments, such as documentation or operational capabilities.  And it can be an information source and alignment tool for other stakeholders, such as Sales, Marketing or Support. 

Here are five keys to making your Product Requirements more effective in guiding and informing your key stakeholders. 

1. Clearly define the business objectives 
Provide the business perspective for the product or service. Why should the company invest in the product? What is its value proposition and key differentiator?  How will you measure success for the product—and the project which delivers it?  What features will you not deliver? 

2. Describe the user and their problem to be solved
Provide sufficient user perspective, so the R&D team can make informed decisions when faced with potential requirement gaps.  For every new feature or major piece of functionality you request, present a concise view of the user, the problem they are experiencing, and what they will want to achieve in using the product.  Personas and Scenarios (User Stories) are a powerful way to illustrate users and their problems.  Personas provide representations of actual people in the target segment, while Scenarios give examples of the problems users face and envisioned solutions using your product. 

3. Develop requirements for the “whole product”
Have you identified all potential users and accounted for their requirements?  Have you accounted for how the customer tries, purchases, pays for, and gets support for the product? Do you have all of the necessary documentation and demos required for corporate buyers and influencers?  Have you identified how the product will be customized to individual customer requirements?

4. Create measurable requirements
Beware of creating “fluffy” requirements that can be interpreted in different ways because of imprecise language, such as “easy to use”, “highly scalable”, or “sufficient capacity.”  Every requirement must be stated in a measurable way that can be tested for success or failure. 

5. Establish realistic priorities
The priority of a requirement is never absolute, and is always influenced by the cost and risk to deliver it.  Your role is to provide an initial assessment of business value and work with R&D to determine the effort necessary to deliver on the requirement.  The final prioritization will be a composite, rank-ordered list with a target cut line confirmed by the major project stakeholders.  

Need help improving your product requirements process?
Learn how to improve the requirements process for your company and products at a two-day workshop: User Centric Product Requirements, hosted by Product Arts and Pivotal Product Management in Seattle on April 29-30, 2008.  You’ll create market requirements from beginning to end in a highly interactive session that will boost your success in driving your next release.