pricing-prd

Pricing PRD (Tactical)

Overview

A pricing PRD is the tactical artifact that converts a pricing strategy into a shipped change. Where business-growth/pricing-strategy/ decides "we are moving from per-seat to per-usage and adding an enterprise tier", a pricing PRD decides "here is the page, the experiment, the rollout, and the rollback". Most PMs underinvest in this artifact — they treat pricing as a marketing problem until the rollout breaks revenue.

This skill is opinionated about the structure of a pricing PRD (distinct from a feature PRD), the discipline of pricing experiments (small samples + revenue sensitivity == high risk of false-positive readouts), grandfathering and communication (the most-often-skipped sections that cause the most damage), A/B testing pricing without confusing customers or violating consumer-law principles, and rollback criteria written in advance rather than improvised under pressure. The frameworks behind it: Patrick Campbell's "Pricing as a feature", Ramanujam's Monetizing Innovation, Van Westendorp's Price Sensitivity Meter, Reforge pricing experimentation, and Stripe's pricing-page patterns.

Core Capabilities

• PRD structure — the 13-section pricing PRD: pricing model, packaging, grandfathering, communication plan, A/B design, rollback, regional pricing, on top of the standard PRD spine.
• Pricing model & packaging decisions — tier / usage / hybrid / per-seat / outcome-based selection with rationale; value carriers, tier boundaries, trial mechanisms.
• Willingness-to-pay research — Van Westendorp, conjoint, and revealed-preference experiments.
• Experiment discipline — hypothesis, primary metric, MDE, sample size, holdout, stop conditions, mix-shift detection.
• Risk management — grandfathering policy, multi-channel communication plan, pre-written rollback thresholds, regional/compliance decisions.

When to Use

• Launching a new pricing model or tier
• Updating prices on existing packages
• Adding usage-based components to a previously flat-fee product
• Reshaping packaging (moving features between tiers, sunsetting a tier, adding entitlements)
• Running a pricing A/B test
• Localizing prices to a new region or currency
• Splitting self-serve and enterprise pricing surfaces

When NOT to use: for the strategic question "should we change pricing at all?" (use business-growth/pricing-strategy/); for the financial-modeling side (use finance/ skills); for SKU/billing implementation (engineering tickets generated from this PRD).

Clarify First

Before generating the pricing PRD, confirm these inputs. If any is unknown or vague, ASK — do not assume:

• [ ] Pricing model change — tier / usage / hybrid / per-seat / outcome-based shift (drives the pricing-model + packaging sections)
• [ ] Existing customers' fate — the grandfathering policy (drives the most-skipped grandfathering + communication sections that cause the most damage)
• [ ] Experiment vs hard launch — A/B test or direct rollout (drives the experiment-design section: hypothesis, MDE, holdout)
• [ ] Rollback trigger — the revenue/conversion threshold that aborts the change (drives the pre-written rollback criteria)

Stop rule: ask only the 2-3 that most change the output. If the user says "just draft it," proceed and list your assumptions at the top of the artifact.

References

Pull the reference that matches the task; keep this file lean and load detail on demand.

• [references/pricing-prd-playbook.md](references/pricing-prd-playbook.md) — the full end-to-end playbook: pricing-PRD-vs-feature-PRD table, model decision, willingness-to-pay methods, packaging, grandfathering, communication plan, A/B test design, rollback criteria, regional pricing, UX checklist, anti-patterns, 12-step workflow, tools/assets table, troubleshooting, success criteria, and source frameworks. Read when authoring any pricing PRD.
• [references/pricing-experimentation-guide.md](references/pricing-experimentation-guide.md) — deep guide on pricing A/B tests, mix-shift detection, and readout windows. Read when designing or reading out a pricing experiment.
• [references/packaging-frameworks.md](references/packaging-frameworks.md) — tier vs usage vs hybrid frameworks and Ramanujam-style packaging. Read when deciding what goes in which tier.
• [references/red-flags.md](references/red-flags.md) — concrete examples of how pricing PRDs go wrong and how to fix them. Read when reviewing a draft for quality.
• assets/pricing_prd_template.md — 13-section pricing PRD template. Use to author the artifact.
• assets/pricing_experiment_design.md — A/B test design worksheet (hypothesis, MDE, holdout). Use when planning a test.
• assets/pricing_page_checklist.md — UX review checklist for the pricing page. Use before shipping the page.
• assets/grandfathering_communication_template.md — customer email for grandfathering communication. Use when drafting the comm plan.

Scope & Limitations

In Scope: Tactical pricing PRD authoring, willingness-to-pay research summary (Van Westendorp, conjoint), packaging decisions, grandfathering policy, customer/sales/support communication plan, A/B test design, rollback criteria, regional pricing decisions, pricing-page UX checklist, anti-pattern avoidance.

Out of Scope: Strategic pricing question "should we change pricing at all?" (see business-growth/pricing-strategy/). Financial modeling and revenue projection (see finance/). Billing and subscription-management implementation (engineering tickets). Detailed conjoint analysis methodology (specialist tooling). Legal review of pricing terms in regulated jurisdictions (must involve actual legal counsel; this skill is not legal advice).

Important Caveats:

• Pricing changes have asymmetric risk. A bad pricing change can erase a year of growth. The PRD discipline (rollback criteria, holdout, communication plan) is risk management, not bureaucracy.
• A/B testing pricing on identified customers carries consumer-law risk in some jurisdictions. When in doubt, test on anonymous visitors only and consult legal.
• The Van Westendorp method has known limitations — stated preference rather than revealed, feature-blind, segment-aggregated. Use as one input among three, not as the answer.
• Pricing-page UX changes can be confounded with pricing-model changes in A/B tests. Run UX-only experiments separately from model-change experiments to attribute the lift correctly.

Integration Points

| Integration | Direction | What flows |

|---|---|---|

| business-growth/pricing-strategy/ | Receives from | Strategic direction (new model, new tier, new segment) becomes the input to the tactical PRD |

| create-prd/ | Extends | Pricing PRD uses sections 1-2 of standard PRD plus 11 pricing-specific sections |

| feature-flag-strategy/ | Feeds into | Pricing rollout uses feature flags for tier entitlements and rollback |

| activation-funnel/ | Bidirectional | Pricing changes affect activation rates; activation funnel measures the impact |

| customer-feedback-triage/ | Receives from | Pricing-related feedback clusters surface willingness-to-pay signals and bill-shock issues |

| finance/ | Bidirectional | Finance models the revenue projection; pricing PRD constrains the model assumptions |

| senior-pm/ | Feeds into | Pricing change becomes a portfolio risk and an executive update item |

| prfaq/ | Feeds into | A new pricing model often warrants a PR/FAQ for internal alignment |

| eol-communication/ | Pattern overlap | EOL of a pricing tier uses similar grandfathering and communication patterns |

| launch-playbook/ | Feeds into | Pricing-page launch follows standard launch playbook for internal/external comm coordination |