Product requirements analysis sits between the emergence of a requirement and the implementation of a product. In theory, it is a distinct step, but in practice it is often closely tied to product planning. Many companies—especially those using a waterfall development model—make requirement judgments quickly during the planning stage rather than assigning a separate analysis process. This reduces idle time for other teams. A more detailed analysis usually appears in large organizations or when a product has many stakeholders with decision-making authority. In smaller or more centralized teams, the product manager often makes the decision directly.

The need for a separate analysis process becomes more obvious during product iteration. Once a new product enters an iteration cycle, feedback arrives from users, operations, management, sales, and other teams. These sources generate a steady stream of requests, and the product team must determine which ones deserve to be implemented.

Start by classifying the request

The first step is to classify each requirement. Classification helps clarify its importance and also tests the product manager’s understanding of product operations. A request may look like one type of requirement on the surface but belong to another category after its purpose is examined.

For example, changing a WeChat Official Account service account’s mass-messaging limit from once a month to four times a month is essentially an operations-related requirement. By contrast, allowing a service account to support WeChat Pay may appear to be an operational strategy, but it is more accurately treated as a functional requirement because it changes what the product can do.

Classification is therefore not merely a filing exercise. It provides an initial understanding of why the request exists and how it may affect the product.

Three factors behind a requirement decision

After classification, the requirement must be analyzed against three main factors:

• the strategic direction;
• the product positioning;
• the user’s actual need.

These factors are related, but each answers a different question.

Strategic direction changes with the product’s stage

Strategic direction is broad and does not always come with precise boundaries. It offers a general range and a target, which are then broken down into stages. Each stage has a different objective, so the criteria for accepting or rejecting a request must change accordingly.

A product commonly moves through three broad stages: launch, development, and iteration.

During the launch stage, the priority is to complete the core functions and release the product quickly enough to test whether it is viable in the market. In the development stage, the team expands and improves the feature set, while also conducting limited experiments and accepting a certain amount of trial and error. By the iteration stage, the product is generally more mature and stable, so decisions place greater emphasis on user experience and refinement.

The same request may therefore receive different treatment at different stages. A request that is valuable in the long term may still be postponed during the launch stage if it is not essential to the core product.

WeChat’s attempt to build a closed commercial ecosystem illustrates this staged approach. Such a system could not be completed in one step. The first stage focused on establishing usage scenarios. Features such as Moments and the Official Accounts platform helped transform WeChat from a simple point-to-point messaging tool into a broader social network. The second stage opened customized interfaces and introduced WeChat Pay internally, laying out a commercial blueprint and attracting more participants. In the third stage, WeChat upgraded its service strategy, opened WeChat Pay more broadly, and relaxed permissions so that common business models could be implemented more easily. This increased the possibility of completing the commercial loop.

The strategic plan is divided into stages, and the stages are further divided into versions. This makes it possible to determine what each version must accomplish at its core. Product positioning, user needs, and the current environment are then considered before the team sets the decision criteria for that version.

This may sound abstract, especially because product managers do not always have the final decision-making authority in their companies. That can be an uncomfortable part of the role. Even so, the underlying principle remains important: no major product becomes complete in a single leap. Every product develops through stages, and each stage has its own priority. The team must identify that priority instead of attempting to satisfy every useful request at once.

Strategic thinking also requires a basic understanding of project management. A request can be useful without being urgent, and it does not follow that every useful request should be implemented immediately. Deciding what to defer and what to advance depends partly on planning experience and accumulated judgment.

Product positioning defines the functional boundary

Strategic direction and product positioning overlap to some extent, but they focus on different levels. Strategy is more closely related to the market and the product’s long-term path, while positioning is more concerned with what the product is designed to do.

Product positioning helps answer a practical question: does this functional request belong inside the product’s intended scope?

Consider a map application built around location-based services, points of interest, and navigation. A request to display traffic conditions fits that positioning and can be included in the product plan for implementation. A request to provide offline map downloads in a web version, however, may conflict with both the product’s positioning and its operating strategy. If it does not support the product’s intended direction, there is no reason to include it simply because someone has asked for it.

Both strategic direction and product positioning are strategic considerations, and the judgment involved is partly subjective. User needs appear more concrete because they come directly from expressed problems or requests. But a user request is not automatically reasonable or suitable for implementation. It still has to be checked against the company’s strategy and the product’s positioning. The web-based offline map example demonstrates why user demand alone cannot determine the product roadmap.

Look past the way users describe their needs

User research offers more room for investigation because users are describing real difficulties or desires. Two distinctions are especially important: do not mistake a user’s immediate request for the underlying need, and do not mistake the current form of a product for its essence.

A stated request may only be an immediate need

Several friends once asked for an explanation of product requirements analysis. That was what they needed at the time, but it was not their deeper requirement. Because users may lack the relevant context or may be unable to describe a problem precisely, they often present an immediate request instead of the real objective behind it.

In this case, the deeper request was not simply to learn how to analyze and decide on requirements after they appeared. It was to understand how product teams discover and shape requirements before those requirements are formally produced. Treating the wording of the request as the complete requirement would therefore have led to the wrong solution.

This distinction matters in product work. Users usually describe the solution they can imagine, not necessarily the problem they actually need solved. Analysis must continue beneath the first formulation.

Product form is not the same as product essence

A product’s visible form can also distract the team from the underlying problem. A suitcase is a product form, but it is not the essence of the product. Its more fundamental purpose is to help people carry belongings while traveling. Once that purpose is identified, product improvement should focus on the difficulties people experience when carrying things during a journey, rather than assuming that every improvement must preserve the traditional suitcase form.

The same reasoning applies to digital products. The existing feature, interface, or delivery method is only one expression of the user’s need. If the team focuses too narrowly on that expression, it may optimize the current product shape while missing a better way to solve the underlying problem.

Turn analysis into a version plan

Once requirements have been classified, they should be evaluated together with strategic direction, product positioning, and user needs. The selected requirements can then be prioritized and ranked according to the work plan. From there, the team prepares requirement documents for the relevant stages and product versions.

This is not a linear checklist in which each factor is considered only once. Requirement analysis and decision-making are connected acts of judgment. Screening, prioritization, and ranking all require the team to compare multiple factors at the same time, along with practical constraints such as the current plan and available resources.

The process demands both a broad view and enough discipline to stay on course. Product teams will continually encounter attractive ideas, urgent opinions, and seemingly valuable extensions. Without a clear understanding of the strategic direction and product positioning, these possibilities can pull the product away from its original purpose.

The goal of requirement analysis is therefore not to collect and implement everything that appears useful. It is to determine what the product most needs at its current stage, what belongs in the current version, and what should wait until the product is ready for it.