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The Customer Requirements Document and the Product Requirements Document (PRD) are often used interchangeably. In my opinion, all CRDs are PRDs but the reverse is not true. There could be internal projects which do not have a customer attached to it but the need for a requirements document is inevitable. Yet, the acronym CRD is loosely used even for internal projects. The argument in favor of this is that there is always a customer - in this case the customer is internal to the company. Puritans tend to ignore this as a habitual hazard more than anything else.

A CRD is a detailed document featuring inputs from business personnel and technical personnel from customer side and vendor side. Needless to say, the actual format of such a document varies from company to company. The following components are usually found in CRDs.

• Product summary and application
• Steering committee contact information
• History of changes to CRD
• Requirement sub-categories
• Milestones
• Deliverables

The personnel involved in framing the CRD, the steering committee, are business analysts, sales managers, engineers and product managers. Product managers double up as business analysts and in fact don many a hat in the requirements gathering phase. An engineering manager or project manager will be able to gauge the resource allocation and advise on the milestones and deliverables schedule.