Design

One-page PRD

Problem, goal, metrics, scope, user stories, out of scope, open questions. One page.

When. As soon as the team that builds is no longer the one that decided, you need a short reference document.

Duration
2 h
Participants
PM writes, team reviews
Output
Validated PRD
Stage
Post-PMF · Scale-up · Mature
ProblemGoal & metricsScopeUser storiesOut of scopeOpen questions
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Filled example

Problem38 % ofinterventions happenwith no signal(basements, plantLéa retypes them at7pm, 6 % of partsnever get billedTop 1 reason in the14 churn interviewsGoal & metricsInterventions loggedthe same day: 61 %to 85 % in 3 monthsZero 'lost job'support ticketsafter releaseGuardrail: syncconflicts under 0.5% of jobsScopeLog, photograph andclose a job with nonetworkAutomatic sync witha visible queueWorks on the 3 mostcommon technicianphonesUser storiesAs Léa, I start ajob in a basementand nothing blocksmeAs Léa, I see whichjobs are not syncedyetAs Marc, I see a jobas done within aminute of Léagetting signalAs Sophie, offlinejobs appear in myexport like anyotherOut of scopeOffline signature(release 2)Offline planning fordispatchersEditing past jobsofflineOpen questionsWhat happens if Marcdeletes a job Léa islogging offline?Do we keep 1 or 7days of jobs cached?Photo compressionlevel: Ana to testwith real boilerphotos

Example data. Fieldnote is a fictional company used to fill all 61 boards, so the examples tell one consistent story.

Scale-up, Karim writes the one-pager for offline mode release 1, because the Field app squad that builds it was not in the discovery.

What the team took away

The page was validated in a 30-minute review; the open question about deleted jobs became the first spike of the sprint.

How to run it

Preparation

Agenda

  1. 15 min
    Silent read
    Everyone reads the whole page in silence and drops a sticky on any sentence they disagree with or do not understand. No talking until the timer ends.
  2. 20 min
    Problem and goal
    Go through the stickies on the first two blocks. The test: can the stakeholder repeat the problem in their own words? Can the tech lead say which metric moves? Rewrite until both say yes.
  3. 30 min
    Scope and out of scope
    Read Scope aloud. For every item, the tech lead asks 'is this needed to move the metric?' Anything that gets a no moves to Out of scope, written down, not deleted.
  4. 25 min
    User stories
    Check each story has a user, an action and a reason. Merge stories that describe the same screen. If there are more than ten, the scope is too big for one page: split the PRD.
  5. 20 min
    Open questions
    Collect every remaining sticky into the Open questions block. Each one gets an owner and a date. A question without an owner is not open, it is ignored.
  6. 10 min
    Sign
    Read the goal and the scope one last time. The stakeholder, the tech lead and the designer each write 'OK' with their name on the board. That is the approval; no separate meeting.

Pitfalls

Afterwards

The signed PRD is the reference for the user flow and the wireframes. Open questions go into the team channel with their dates. Any scope change after signing is a new paragraph in the PRD with a date, never a hallway agreement.

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