Thursday, December 11, 2014

Warning: Product Description is not a Functional Requirement Specification


Requirements vs PRINCE2Do you have a project developing a new product, website or IT system? A common misconception is that a PRINCE2 product description or project product description (PPD) is the Functional Requirement Specification for what you are building. Well, it is not. Here is “definition for dummies”:

  • The Technical or Functional Requirement Specification is the documentation that in detail describes the requested behavior of an engineering system – so the behavior of your project’s output.
  • In PRINCE2, the Project Product Description (PPD) is a high-level description of your project’s output.
  • There is a Product Description representing everything being done in a project. If someone is making a Requirement Specification, a Product Description is describing what competency is needed to develop such a requirement specification, what format to follow and how to quality assure the requirement specification document.
The PRINCE2 Project Product Description is part of the Project Brief. Product Descriptions are separate documents (or part of the Project Initiation Document). You can find these document on the PRINCE2 Templates page.

Related Articles:
Does a Design Input Replace a PRINCE2 Product Description
What is a PRINCE2 Product?
PRINCE2 – Hierarchy of Requirements
 Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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