Requirement Writing

Gaurav Oberoi, VP Product, SurveyMonkey

Gaurav argues that especially at larger companies, writing a comprehensive spec (in the vein of Amazon & Ben Horowitz) has the benefits of moving critical thinking up front, communicating efficiently, and raising accountability. Gaurav then provides an in-depth example.

Jackie Bavaro, Head of Product Management, Asana

Asana's project template is more detailed than the Atlassian team poster. It starts with sections for Background, Problems, Goals, Vision, and Hypotheses, and then digs into a proposal with concept mocks.

John Cutler, Senior Product Manager, Zendesk

John explains how to focus on problems rather than narrowly-defined solutions in a project one-pager, and provides 17 different possible sections to include.

Atlassian, Editorial Team, Atlassian

Atlassian's project poster template focuses on understanding: 1) What problem you're solving and why it matters to customers 2) Assumptions that guide the project, and how they've been validated

Jon Dobrowolski, Sr. Director of Product, InVision

The traditional user story is written as: "As a <persona>, I want <goal/desire> so that <benefit>" Jon builds on this format by adding User Scenarios, in order to provide more detail to anyone building a user story.

Darien Ford, Sr. Director of Software Engineering, Capital One

Darien adds more details on how to write user stories and use them as conversation starters, with elements such as: 1. Value statement 2. List of functional requirements 3. List of acceptability requirements 4. Simple spec 5. Wireframes/mockups

Paul Adams, VP of Product, Intercom

Paul argues that the persona aspects of user stories ("As a <persona>") are too specific and do not actually map to behaviors. Behaviors can span demographics, so Intercom introduced a new format based on behaviors: [ When _____ ] [ I want to _____ ] [So I can _____ ]

James Heimbuck, Sr. Product Manager, GitLab

James and the team at GitLab explain how user story mapping with an example in this video. It includes how to think about the flow of user stories in a time-based sequence, and how to prioritize within the user stories.

Yuhki Yamashita, VP Product, Figma

This PRD template is structured into Problem Alignment, Solution Alignment (including real-time updates to design files), and Launch Readiness (including cross-functional team dependencies).