6 essential parts of a product management playbook

Craft purposeful product documentation — organize your info into these six essential document categories.

July 15, 2024

6 essential parts of a product management playbook

by Julie Price

Desktop files. Browser bookmarks. Starred emails. What do these three things have in common? The short answer: Good intentions for "safekeeping." But the reality is that the more places you store information you want to revisit, the less likely you are to actually refresh any of it. This is why you need a single source of truth for your product management team and all of your internal product documentation. Think of this as a product playbook that codifies decision-making processes and best practices for product development at your organization.

How do you craft your product playbook? Start with these six document types that cover everything from strategic planning to onboarding new hires.

You have heard us use different terms for this type of documentation — playbook, internal wiki, and knowledge base among them. There are nuances to each use case, but it does not matter if you use a different name. What is important is establishing a shared understanding of how your team operates, collaborates, and makes decisions. Effective internal documentation provides answers to questions such as these:

  • What is our product vision, and how does it align with the company's vision and goals?

  • Who is our target market, and what are its primary needs?

  • What metrics do we use to measure product success and performance, and how do we track them?

  • What is our process for gathering and prioritizing feedback and feature requests?

  • How do we ensure new employees understand our workflows and team dynamics?

Of course, there are many more. But do not let a long list of questions turn into a psychological hurdle to getting started.

To borrow one of my favorite phrases, you do not need to boil the ocean. Rather, start with our list of document types below and choose a knowledge management tool that is purpose-built for product teams. Aha! Knowledge comes with intuitive note-taking capabilities, templates, and advanced user permissions. You can also import existing documentation from other tools (such as Confluence). And when it comes time to draft documentation, use the AI assistant to produce first drafts in short order.

These are the document types or parent folders I suggest starting with:

Foundational information

Strategy first. This is the go-to place for anyone on the team looking for the core elements that shape your company and product strategy: vision, target customers, and organizational structure.

In it, you would store information such as:


A collage of three foundational information templates available via Aha! software

Guidelines and industry best practices

These are reference materials and best practices your product and cross-functional teams rely on to complete high-quality work. You can customize whiteboard templates — such as a concept map or workflow diagram — to illustrate relationships among ideas, principles, and teams.

Examples of docs you might store in this section include:


A collage of three guidelines and industry best practices templates available via Aha! software

Market and customer research

This category includes critical insights about your market landscape and competitors as well as other research. Results from surveys, focus groups, and competitive analysis can easily sprawl — keeping these insights consolidated helps everyone derive value from the information.

Store the following information here:


A collage of three market and customer research templates available via Aha! software

Team workflows

Work types, processes, checklists, and review cycles — these documents ensure clarity across teams.

Include information to help the team understand how you:


A collage of three team workflow templates available via Aha! software

Knowledge capture

This is how you record team meetings and other happenings. (Bonus tip: Select Meeting as a document type in Aha! Knowledge and use one of our templates to standardize your agenda, flow, and follow-up tasks.)

Make subfolders for things such as:


A collage of three knowledge-capture templates available via Aha! software

Team training

Help new hires get integrated quickly with a dedicated space for onboarding notes, videos, and assignments.

Consider the following docs:


A collage of three team training templates available via Aha! software
When internal documentation is organized and easy to find, the team will actually look forward to referencing it.

Consolidating all of this information will go a long way toward completing your product playbook. For even more guidance, visit these resources:

And if you get tripped up along the way, please reach out. We respond really fast.

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Our suite of tools includes Aha! Roadmaps, Aha! Ideas, Aha! Whiteboards, Aha! Knowledge, and Aha! Develop. Use each product individually or combined to help teams deliver even greater value. Sign up for a free 30-day trial or join a live demo to see why more than 1 million product builders trust our software to build lovable products and be happy doing it.

Julie Price

Julie Price

Julie loves helping product teams build products that customers love. She is the director of product management and UX at Aha! — the world’s #1 product development software. Julie started on our Customer Success team before moving into a senior product role. She has over 20 years of experience in product management and was previously director of product at a corporate wellness software company.

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