PRD-Studio

    Technical Requirements Checklist for SaaS 2025

    The comprehensive guide to technical requirements for modern cloud applications

    Technical Guide
    13 min read
    Complete Checklist

    Table of Contents

    SaaS Technical Checklist
    2025 Edition

    Complete Technical Requirements for Modern SaaS

    Everything you need to specify for a production-ready cloud application

    January 2025•Technical Architecture•SaaS Best Practices

    Why Technical Requirements Matter for SaaS

    Building a SaaS product without comprehensive technical requirements is like constructing a building without blueprints. You might get something that works initially, but it won't scale, it won't be secure, and it will be expensive to fix later.

    The stakes are higher for SaaS than traditional software: You're responsible for uptime, security, compliance, multi-tenancy, and serving thousands (or millions) of users simultaneously. Missing a single technical requirement can mean data breaches, downtime, or architectural rewrites that cost millions.

    This comprehensive checklist covers every technical requirement category for modern SaaS products in 2025, from architecture and security to scalability and compliance. Use it to ensure your PRD doesn't miss critical technical considerations.

    💸

    Cost of Missing Technical Requirements

    • • Security breach: Average cost $4.45M (IBM 2023)
    • • Architectural rewrite: 6-12 months + $500K-$2M
    • • Compliance failure: GDPR fines up to 4% of global revenue
    • • Poor scalability: Lost revenue during growth periods

    System Architecture Requirements

    Your architecture decisions determine everything: cost, scalability, reliability, and development speed. These are the critical architectural requirements every SaaS PRD should specify:

    ✅ Hosting & Infrastructure

    Cloud Provider: AWS, Azure, GCP, or multi-cloud? Specify and justify
    Regions: Which geographic regions for data residency and latency?
    Deployment Model: Kubernetes, serverless, containers, VMs?
    Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, CloudFormation, Pulumi?
    CI/CD Pipeline: Automated deployments, staging environments, rollback strategy

    ✅ Application Architecture

    Architecture Pattern: Monolith, microservices, or hybrid? Why?
    Frontend Framework: React, Vue, Angular, or server-rendered?
    Backend Framework: Node.js, Python/Django, Ruby/Rails, Go?
    API Design: RESTful, GraphQL, gRPC? Versioning strategy?
    Real-time Communication: WebSockets, Server-Sent Events, polling?

    ✅ Data Layer

    Primary Database: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB? Multi-tenancy model?
    Caching Strategy: Redis, Memcached? What data is cached and for how long?
    Search Engine: Elasticsearch, Algolia, database full-text search?
    Object Storage: S3, Azure Blob, GCS for files, images, backups?
    Queue/Message Broker: RabbitMQ, SQS, Kafka for async processing?

    ✅ High Availability & Disaster Recovery

    Uptime SLA: 99.9%, 99.95%, 99.99%? Define acceptable downtime
    Redundancy: Multi-AZ deployment, database replicas, load balancing
    Backup Strategy: Frequency, retention period, automated recovery testing
    Failover Plan: Automatic or manual? RTO and RPO targets?
    Incident Response: On-call rotation, escalation procedures, runbooks

    Security & Compliance Requirements

    Security isn't optional for SaaS—it's table stakes. One breach can destroy your business. Here's what your PRD must specify:

    Authentication & Authorization

    Authentication Method: Username/password, OAuth2, SAML SSO, Magic links?
    Multi-Factor Authentication: Required, optional, or enterprise-only?
    Session Management: Token expiration, refresh tokens, concurrent session limits
    Password Policy: Length, complexity, rotation requirements, breach detection
    Role-Based Access Control: Define roles, permissions, hierarchy
    API Authentication: API keys, JWT tokens, OAuth for third-party access

    Data Security & Encryption

    Encryption at Rest: AES-256 for database, file storage, backups
    Encryption in Transit: TLS 1.3 for all connections, HTTPS only
    Key Management: AWS KMS, Azure Key Vault, or HashiCorp Vault
    PII Handling: Identify all personal data, specify encryption and access controls
    Data Masking: Mask sensitive data in logs, analytics, non-production environments

    Application Security

    OWASP Top 10 Protection: SQL injection, XSS, CSRF, etc. prevention
    Rate Limiting: API rate limits, DDoS protection, brute force prevention
    Input Validation: Server-side validation, sanitization, size limits
    Dependency Scanning: Automated vulnerability scanning for libraries/packages
    Security Headers: CSP, HSTS, X-Frame-Options, etc.
    Penetration Testing: Frequency, scope, remediation SLAs

    Compliance Requirements

    GDPR Compliance: Data portability, right to be forgotten, consent management
    CCPA/Privacy Laws: California and other state privacy requirements
    SOC 2 Type II: Security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality
    HIPAA (if applicable): Healthcare data protection requirements
    PCI DSS (if applicable): Payment card data security standards
    Audit Logging: Who accessed what data, when, and why—immutable logs

    Scalability & Performance Requirements

    Your SaaS needs to grow from 10 users to 10,000 (or 10 million) without a complete rewrite. Specify these requirements upfront:

    Performance Targets

    Page Load Time: Initial load <3 seconds, subsequent <1 second
    API Response Time: p50 <200ms, p95 <500ms, p99 <1s
    Database Query Performance: Complex queries <2s, simple <100ms
    Time to Interactive (TTI): Mobile <5s, Desktop <3s
    Core Web Vitals: LCP, FID, CLS targets for SEO

    Scalability Specifications

    Concurrent Users: Support target (e.g., 10K, 100K, 1M simultaneous users)
    Data Volume: Handle X GB/TB of data per customer, total system capacity
    Requests Per Second: Peak load capacity for API, web, background jobs
    Horizontal Scaling: Auto-scaling rules, minimum/maximum instance counts
    Database Scaling: Read replicas, sharding strategy, connection pooling
    CDN Strategy: Static asset delivery, edge caching, geographic distribution

    Resource Limits & Quotas

    Upload Limits: File size max, file type restrictions, virus scanning
    Storage Quotas: Per-user or per-organization limits, enforcement strategy
    API Rate Limits: Requests per minute/hour, throttling vs hard limits
    Concurrent Connections: WebSocket limits, long-polling restrictions

    Avoid these common PRD mistakes when specifying technical requirements →

    Integrations & API Requirements

    Third-Party Integrations

    Required Integrations: List all third-party services (payment, email, analytics, etc.)
    OAuth Providers: Google, Microsoft, GitHub SSO integration requirements
    Webhooks: Incoming webhooks from partners, event delivery guarantees
    Error Handling: Retry logic, circuit breakers, fallback behavior

    Public API Requirements

    API Documentation: OpenAPI/Swagger specs, interactive docs, code examples
    Versioning Strategy: URL-based (v1, v2) or header-based versioning
    Deprecation Policy: How long old API versions are supported
    SDK Support: Official client libraries for JavaScript, Python, Ruby, etc.
    Webhook Delivery: Outgoing webhooks to customer systems, retry logic

    Data Management Requirements

    Data Lifecycle

    Data Retention: How long to keep different data types (active, archived, deleted)
    Soft vs Hard Delete: When to mark as deleted vs permanently remove
    Data Portability: Export format (JSON, CSV, XML), completeness guarantees
    Data Import: Bulk import from competitors, migration tools, validation

    Backup & Recovery

    Backup Frequency: Continuous, hourly, daily, weekly?
    Backup Retention: How long to keep backups (30 days, 90 days, 7 years?)
    Point-in-Time Recovery: Can restore to any moment? How far back?
    Recovery Testing: Automated restore tests, RTO/RPO verification

    Monitoring & Operations Requirements

    Observability

    Application Monitoring: APM tool (DataDog, New Relic, Sentry) for error tracking
    Infrastructure Monitoring: CPU, memory, disk, network metrics and alerts
    Logging: Centralized logs (ELK, Splunk), structured logging, retention period
    Distributed Tracing: Request tracing across microservices (Jaeger, Zipkin)
    Synthetic Monitoring: Uptime checks from multiple locations, API health checks

    Alerting & Incident Management

    Alert Thresholds: Define critical vs warning levels for all key metrics
    Alert Channels: PagerDuty, Slack, email, SMS routing rules
    On-Call Rotation: Schedule, escalation policy, response time SLAs
    Incident Response: Runbooks for common issues, post-mortem process

    How PRD Studio Generates Complete Technical Requirements

    Manually creating this comprehensive checklist for every PRD takes hours and is error-prone.PRD Studio's AI automatically generates complete technical requirements tailored to your specific product type, target scale, and compliance needs.

    PRD Studio's Technical Architecture Feature

    The Technical Architecture premium add-on generates:

    • • Complete infrastructure recommendations based on scale and budget
    • • Security requirements customized for your industry and compliance needs
    • • Scalability specifications with concrete performance targets
    • • Integration requirements for all necessary third-party services
    • • Data management policies including backup and recovery strategies
    • • Monitoring and alerting setup tailored to your team size

    Get Complete Technical Requirements Automatically

    Stop missing critical technical requirements. PRD Studio's AI generates comprehensive technical specifications covering architecture, security, scalability, and compliance—in minutes.

    Includes premium Technical Architecture add-on • Comprehensive checklist coverage

    Related Resources

    Avoid PRD Mistakes

    7 fatal mistakes to avoid

    Requirements Best Practices

    User stories vs use cases

    30-Minute PRD Workflow

    Create PRDs in minutes