Top 10 Sign Your Product has a Bad PRD (Product Requirements Document)

Author: Waqar B. Hashim is a veteran product development leader with over 30 years of experience bringing complex hardware-software integrated products to market, generating more than $5 billion in sales worldwide.

“Product requirements… they’re just suggestions, right?”

That’s what a founder told me on an emergency call after their latest sprint collapsed. The team was demoralized, investors were frustrated, and weeks of time and funding had gone up in smoke. They weren’t looking for nuance they wanted a silver bullet.

Here’s the truth: there is no silver bullet. But after 30 years of building products, I can tell you this, if you’re a leader, you can spot the symptoms of a broken PRD and diagnose what’s wrong before it wrecks your execution.

1. Constant Firefighting

Symptom: Every sprint ends in chaos, bugs, scope rework, panic.

Diagnosis: Your PRD is missing edge cases, acceptance criteria, or clarity and a lack of shared understanding.

Founder’s Pain: You’ve been here before: a sprint demo that unravels into a bug bash, your engineers frustrated, your investors skeptical. Instead of focusing on new features, your team keeps patching holes. That “ship fast” culture? It’s costing you velocity.

Why Fixing It Helps: A clear PRD functions like guardrails. When edge cases and acceptance criteria are spelled out, engineers can anticipate scenarios instead of discovering them during QA. You stop running in circles, and the team can finally build forward.

2. Vague or Bloated Specs

Symptom: PRD is long, vague, or both, filled with fluff, not function.

Diagnosis: The PRD focuses on “what” not “why,” adding unnecessary features.

Founder’s Pain: You’ve probably seen a 20-page doc stuffed with buzzwords like “seamless” and “intuitive.” But when engineers ask, “What exactly does this mean?”, no one can answer. Or worse, the doc is so bloated it gets ignored, leaving teams to guess.

Why Fixing It Helps: A lean, sharp PRD isn’t about cutting words; it’s about focusing on outcomes. When you swap fluff for clarity, your team knows exactly what to build and why it matters. That means no more wasted sprints on “nice-to-have” features that never move the needle.

3. Frequent Scope Creep

Symptom: “Oh, add one more thing…” leads to feature bloat.

Diagnosis: PRD lacks non-goals and constraints.

Founder’s Pain: If your backlog looks like a Frankenstein monster, half-baked features, endless “stretch goals”, it’s usually because the PRD didn’t draw a line in the sand. Every investor suggestion or stakeholder idea squeezes in, killing focus.

Why Fixing It Helps: By explicitly writing “non-goals” into your PRD, you give your team permission to say no. Boundaries create freedom. Instead of building 100 things badly, you’ll deliver 10 things well—and that’s what gets traction.

4. Misalignment Between Teams

Symptom: Execs want one thing, devs build another, misunderstanding everywhere.

Diagnosis: PRD doesn’t differentiate audiences; nothing tailored to leadership, engineering, or design.

Founder’s Pain: Have you ever walked into a board meeting only to realize leadership expected something totally different than what engineering built? That’s not incompetence, it’s miscommunication. Each group skimmed the same PRD but read it through their own lens.

Why Fixing It Helps: A PRD that provides role-based views, executive summary for leadership, detailed AC for engineers, UX notes for design, means no more crossed wires. Everyone gets what they need, no more, no less. Alignment isn’t just a buzzword; it’s time saved and trust restored.

5. Unplanned Rework or Overtime

Symptom: Unexpected rewrites or crunch-time sprints.

Diagnosis: Requirements are ambiguous or dependencies hidden, causing rollout delays.

Founder’s Pain: You plan a two-week sprint. It turns into four. Engineers are pulling late nights, not because they’re lazy, but because the requirements kept changing mid-flight. That’s morale-killing.

Why Fixing It Helps: When dependencies and ambiguities are nailed down early in the PRD, estimates actually stick. Teams can trust their timelines. You spend less money on overtime and more time hitting milestones.

6. Delivery Delays

Symptom: Features drag on longer than estimated.

Diagnosis: PRD omits technical constraints (e.g., performance, security), underestimating scope.

Founder’s Pain: A “simple” feature turns into a month-long saga once engineers realize the system must scale, encrypt, or meet strict latency. Why wasn’t that in the PRD? Because no one thought to write it down.

Why Fixing It Helps: Including non-functional requirements up front forces honest estimates. You avoid nasty surprises late in development and keep investor promises intact.

7. Missing User Acceptance Criteria

Symptom: Engineers ship it, but QA or customers reject it.

Diagnosis: No concrete Given/When/Then examples, ACs are vague or missing.

Founder’s Pain: Ever launch a feature, only to have QA say “this isn’t what we asked for”? Or worse, users churn because a core flow didn’t behave as expected? That’s the cost of skipping clear acceptance criteria.

Why Fixing It Helps: Writing acceptance criteria forces everyone to agree on “done.” You stop wasting sprints debating bugs versus features. Customers see reliability, and trust grows.

8. Teams Don’t Trust the PRD

Symptom: PRDs are ignored; everyone works from memory or Jira tasks.

Diagnosis: PRD is either stale or disconnected from actual development workflow.

Founder’s Pain: If your team jokes that the PRD is “that dusty doc nobody opens,” you’ve already lost credibility. When the PRD doesn’t reflect reality, people stop trusting it and that’s how tribal knowledge replaces process.

Why Fixing It Helps: A living PRD kept fresh with every sprint and linked directly to your tickets becomes a source of truth. Teams know where to look, and decisions don’t get lost in Slack.

9. Compliance or Audit Failures

Symptom: Regulatory reviews reveal missing traceability or requirements.

Diagnosis: PRD lacks compliance-oriented structure (e.g., HIPAA, automotive standards).

Founder’s Pain: If you’re in healthtech or fintech, or other industries where compliance certification is required, missing compliance requirements isn’t just embarrassing it’s existential. Failing an audit can stall partnerships, sink fundraising, or even lead to fines.

Why Fixing It Helps: Compliance-ready PRDs build trust with regulators, partners, and investors. With traceability and risk registers baked in, you don’t scramble during audits, you pass them.

10. Low Product-Market Accuracy

Symptom: Shipping products nobody uses, or that solve the wrong problem.

Diagnosis: PRD lacks a clear definition of user needs, metrics, or success benchmarks.

Founder’s Pain: You spent six months building a feature no one adopted. It wasn’t the engineers’ fault. It wasn’t even the PM’s fault. The PRD never articulated the problem in measurable terms, so the team chased the wrong outcome.

Why Fixing It Helps: A PRD that links directly to customer pain points and metrics forces discipline. You’ll stop solving imaginary problems and start shipping features your users can’t live without.

Why Fixing Your PRD Delivers ROI

• Cut execution cost: PRDs that are clear and complete prevent expensive rework and late-stage pivots.

• Shorten lead times: With fewer surprises and tighter scope control, teams ship faster.

• Boost confidence: Investors and stakeholders trust a process that produces predictable, high-quality outcomes.

For founders, a strong PRD isn’t paperwork, it’s leverage. It’s the difference between burning cash on rework and accelerating toward market fit.

A long time ago while working in the automotive business I heard a very profound quote which applies 100% in this case. 'Why is there no time to do things right the first time when there is time to do them over and over again?'

If you want to learn how to get on the right trajectory to avoid these challenges schedule a Free Expert Review at https://calendly.com/waqarhashim/free-expert-review

Smartware Advisors is your Product Development CoPilot.

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