prd-current-state

To document the current state workflow for a product requirements document, you capture existing user workflows, manual workarounds, and quantifiable operational costs using a standardized template to establish a measurable baseline.

Quantifying operational costs during the product discovery phase is necessary to justify product change, proving that current manual workarounds are costing the company significant time and revenue before proposing new solutions.

The best way to build a business case by documenting manual workarounds is to systematically capture the baseline status quo and quantify specific impacts like time loss, error rates, and support load to ground your proposal in measurable evidence.

Yes, you need a project identifier to start documenting the baseline status quo, as it is required to maintain consistency across project documentation when applying the standardized template during the initial discovery phase.

Yes, you can use a standardized template for capturing existing user workflows across multiple projects, ensuring consistent baseline documentation and measurable evidence gathering by defining a unique project identifier for each initiative.

You should not use current state documentation when proposing solutions without measurable evidence, as this skill is specifically designed for the initial discovery phase to prevent teams from jumping to solutions before establishing a clear baseline.