6 Proven Practices to write & manage PRDs like a Pro — Chapter 6

Here is the final chapter on how to write and manage PRDs like a pro. This practice is very crucial for your PRD’s and eventually your product’s success. If you haven’t read the last five chapters, go ahead and read them, links below:

Chapter 1 — Use a standard PRD template

Chapter 2 — Start Early, Test, Review, and Iterate

Chapter 3 — Peer to Peer PRD Reviews

Chapter 4 — PRD Walk-Throughs

Chapter 5 — Get PRD Approvers

Proven Practice №6 — Keep Your PRDs Updated

PRDs are not documents that are written, shared, and forgotten after the product release. A PRD will carry information about the initiatives developed and the outcomes they achieve on a continuous basis. Apart from this, a PRD will also contain all the future work that will be done to achieve the product goal it pertains to

Track your Metrics

Track your metrics related to the product work closely and update the same in your PRD. Keeping your PRD updated with the metrics you are tracking will provide context for the future work you will plan

Your team members/stakeholders will be informed about the outcomes you are achieving after the release of the new feature/product through the PRD

Thirdly, having historical evidence of the tracked product metrics in the PRD along with all the iterations and developments done for that product/feature will provide in-depth information and great context about why the product was built the way it is, what backed up those decisions on adding/removing a certain feature, and looking back you or anyone in your team can learn what could have been done better, so that it can pave the way for better product work in future

Continuous Product Feedback

Gathering product feedback on a regular basis is very essential for the future growth of any product. Here both quantitative and qualitative feedback collection is important. After a feature/product has been released, keep collecting data about that feature’s /product’s usage by your users. This data will inform the future work of the feature/product and will be added in the PRD as a continuation

Use analytical tools like Amplitude/Mixpanel to collect quantitative data about the users interaction with the product. By tracking user behaviour on the product, you can understand how they use your product, and which features might be a struggle point

If you work on a digital product, with online customers, then use Google Analytics. This will help you to understand how your audiences are resonating with your product. You can track a number of parameters like pages visited, terms searched on the site, time spent on a page, etc

Pair your quantitative data with qualitative research, done in the form of usability testing, user feedback sessions. Use these methods to understand why’s behind the user behaviour. Empathise with your users problems, needs, and behaviour patterns, and understand why they are facing those certain issues with your product.

Combine the ‘What’ from your quantitative research with the ‘Why’ from your qualitative research and you will be naturally discovering the solutions you need to design to solve those particular problems

Go ahead and discuss these findings with your stakeholders, internal team members to kickstart the next cycle of your feature/product iteration

Ensure, that you continue to write your product requirements and other details in the same PRD as a continuation of achieving the respective product goal. The idea is to have all your product work related to a particular product goal in the same PRD, so that you can look up the document and see all the initiatives you have undertaken to fulfil the product goal and compare your metrics as well

PRDs can serve as a single source of truth for companies when it comes to understanding and analysing how product goals have fared so far, what initiatives were taken to achieve those goals, and how far they still have to go for achieving those goals