From the Desk of Chad Enterprise, CTO of MegaCorp
“I’ve seen Product Requirement Documents longer than War and Peace. Today I’ll share my tips for adding just enough buzzwords and tables so no one reads them—but everyone signs off.”
Chad
Good day, fellow architects of the digital realm. Chad Enterprise here, CTO of MegaCorp, where PowerPoint decks have table-of-contents slides and Word documents are measured not in pages, but in megabytes.
Today, I’m tackling a sacred text of the enterprise world: the Product Requirements Document (PRD).
If you’re imagining a concise, elegant summary of what needs to be built… bless your naïve heart.
At MegaCorp, we write PRDs that rival War and Peace in both length and existential gravity.
Allow me to share the secrets behind crafting a PRD so dense, it’s technically eligible for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction—or at least a spot on a library shelf.
Step 1: Always Start with an Executive Summary Nobody Will Read
Your PRD must begin with an Executive Summary—a short, polite paragraph describing the purpose of the document.
Nobody reads it. But if you omit it, someone will notice and insist the document is “incomplete.”
Step 2: Inflate Your Table of Contents to Rival an Epic Poem
A solid enterprise PRD boasts a Table of Contents longer than some indie novellas.
Mandatory sections include:
- Purpose
- Scope
- Out of Scope
- Goals
- Non-Goals
- Stakeholder List
- User Personas
- Use Cases
- Edge Cases
- Data Models
- Reporting Requirements
- Compliance Considerations
- Legal Considerations
- Accessibility Requirements
- Scalability Requirements
- Third-Party Integration Requirements
- Deployment Plan
- Risk Register
- Risk Register Appendix
- Glossary of Terms
And the all-important Appendix of Other Appendices.
Step 3: Use Just Enough Buzzwords to Confuse Everyone
Enterprise PRDs thrive on language that sounds deeply meaningful but reveals nothing specific. Examples include:
- “Leverage a synergistic approach to modular architecture.”
- “Ensure seamless enablement of cross-functional capabilities.”
- “Establish a holistic view of stakeholder ecosystems.”
- “Drive actionable insights through transformative digital touchpoints.”
If it reads like a TED Talk transcript, you’re on the right track.
Step 4: Add Diagrams. So Many Diagrams.
No enterprise PRD is complete without diagrams.
You’ll need:
- Swimlane diagrams with so many lanes it looks like an Olympic pool.
- Entity-relationship diagrams that require a magnifying glass to decipher.
- Architecture diagrams featuring boxes labeled “API Layer,” “Service Bus,” and “Magic Happens Here.”
- Process flows with arrows going in so many directions it resembles modern art.
Tip: The more shapes, the more serious the document looks.
Step 5: List Stakeholders… and Then More Stakeholders
Your stakeholder list should occupy at least three pages. Even if half these people won’t read the PRD, include them anyway.
This way, when the project goes sideways, you can say, “Well, they were listed as stakeholders.”
Step 6: Bury the Requirements in Mountains of Context
This is crucial: never state a requirement plainly.
Instead of:
“The system shall export a CSV file.”
Write:
“In alignment with enterprise objectives and regulatory considerations, the system shall facilitate the enablement of data extraction functionality, supporting industry-standard file formats such as Comma-Separated Values (CSV), with adherence to ISO-8859-1 encoding to ensure legacy system compatibility and downstream operational efficiencies.”
Legal loves it. The rest of us weep softly.
Step 7: End with the Mandatory “To Be Determined” Section
Every enterprise PRD concludes with a section labeled “TBD.”
No matter how comprehensive your document, there will always be unknowns. Listing them explicitly is how we cover ourselves in meetings.
It’s enterprise insurance.
Lessons for Aspiring Enterprise Developers
So, my dear WordPress developers yearning to scale the walls of enterprise, remember:
- A dense PRD isn’t just a document—it’s a political shield.
- Writing it is less about clarity and more about survival.
- The more pages, the safer you are from blame.
- Humor helps. Without it, you’ll drown in bullet points and conditional statements.
At MegaCorp, we don’t just write requirements. We create literary epics of commerce and code.
Until next time, keep your user stories vague enough to pass legal review and your diagrams so complex they require a legend.
Yours in documentation synergy,
Chad Enterprise, CTO of MegaCorp
