How I use ChatGPT to write PRDs as a Product Manager?
One thing that I’ve learned over the years is a well written PRD brings a lot more clarity to the team while solving specific customer problem and it also reduces back and forth between product & engineering teams.
Remember, this image?
That’s why most CPOs or VPs of Product share certain templates, and PMs have to mostly fill them with all the details.
Honestly, this helps in a couple of ways:
- PRDs follow certain standard practices.
- You don’t miss anything critical while writing PRDs.
- Reviewing PRDs for the leadership team also becomes easier.
But, it takes around 2–3 hours to write a comprehensive PRD covering all the scenarios and edge cases — and as PMs, we don’t have time :)
We’re always jumping from one meeting to another. I face this too, and it’s hard to get focused time without interruptions.
“Hey, can we connect for 5 mins over huddle?” or “Quick Huddle?”
[we are all in the same boat]
This is where AI tools helped me and we all know it will get better and better from here.
I’ve been using ChatGPT from almost the time when they launched it. Over time, I figured out a better way to use it for my day to day product manager tasks starting from crafting well written PRDs within 15–20 mins provided I already have all the necessary details.
Let’s jump to How I do this?
1. Create the PRD Template and Break It into 3–4 Parts
First, I start with a template and break it into different sections, such as:
- One-pager document
- Writing the Introduction or Objective section with Success Metrics, Estimated Impact etc.
- User Stories and Acceptance Criteria
- GTM (Go-to-Market)
2. Next, I Share the Template in ChatGPT with a detailed prompt
Quality of content depends a lot on the prompt, context and specific detail that you share about the feature. More details within a structured format drastically improves the response quality.
With different iteration, I also realised that adding the company, pod or charter gives LLM initial context to understand the feature in depth, drafting better quality response.
Act as an expert Product Manager at <company_name> and help me write the PRD for <specific task in detail> by following this template. Let’s do it step by step, first we will focus on <part of PRD eg: Introduction> using the template below.
[More details about feature]
[Template]
Here is the example prompt for writing PRD for a newly launched product feature by Zomato around “Recommendation from Friends”.
You are the Lead Product Manager at Zomato, working on the Personalization and Recommendations charter. I need your help in drafting a PRD for a new feature titled “Recommendations from Friends” using the template provided below. Let’s do this step by step. To start with, we will first focus on the Introduction and Observation sections of the PRD. The core idea is to enable users to share restaurant recommendations with their friends. When a user enjoys a restaurant or dish, they can recommend it. To facilitate this, we’ll request access to the user’s contacts. Once permission is granted, users will start seeing friend-based recommendations within each restaurant listing. This will also enhance restaurant discovery when filters are applied.
[PRD Template]
Highlighting again the importance of providing contextual information about the feature you are working on. Try to share a lot of details — what’s the problem or opportunity that you are trying to solve, who is it for and what would you improve. If it’s an experiment, highlight that it’s an experiment and you are testing multiple variants.
You can even use a dictation app or voice-to-text app to speak your thoughts and paste the transcription here (more details on some other post).
Important note: You do not have to share any sensitive information with LLMs. You can also turn off the training data inside ChatGPT and trust them that they will not use any of the information for training the models.
3. Iterate if it misses something
In certain cases, you may need to go back and forth to refine specific parts. Alternatively, you can use the output as a reference rather than starting from a completely blank slate and make it your own. You will have to proofread everything before directly copying it because sometimes AI will just fill in random data confidently around the Observation & Insights section.
Here is an example conversation where I played around “Recommendation feature of Zomato”
https://chatgpt.com/share/675d7ec6-0434-800f-92a0-07e105f88f20
Why This Method Works
Essentially, I’m doing three core things here:
- Providing as much context as possible in terms of the company, role, and product feature I’m working on, so the LLMs can follow a set of guidelines.
- Breaking the PRD into smaller chunks instead of asking it to generate everything at once. Models has limited context windows and it can hallucinate or take shortcuts.
- Sharing an exact template in which I need the output.
You can also experiment with prompts by adding your sample writing templates and asking ChatGPT to follow them.
Final Step — Reviewing your PRD
One more step to improve content quality is to ask AI to review your draft. This helps identify edge cases you might have missed or adds more depth and structure to the document.
Ultimately, you are the final judge of your content, so please ensure you do a thorough review before sharing it internally.
Prompt
“You are the VP Product of [company_name], Review the PRD of [team/pod] and provide appropriate feedback. Please highlight any missed scenarios or cases which seems critical for product charter.
[paste entire PRD]
I’m confident this method will save you at least 1–1.5 hours every time you write your next PRD.
Here is the PRD Template that you can duplicate or refine based on your use case or even use your company’s PRD template https://docs.google.com/document/d/13jrXdK4yinP7qv0lw6GcQXvB4JuDfq6zZZOEhg4yQ14/edit?tab=t.0
Happy writing!
