PRFAQ

Press Release and Frequently Asked Questions

As a Technical Product Manager for AWS, I have had the opportunity to work on various projects and write numerous PRFAQ documents. A PRFAQ is the main deliverable of the Working Backwards process. Essentially, it is a 6-page document that contains a press release (PR) and Frequently Asks Questions (FAQs). The press release outlines the complete customer experience and benefits, introducing the product as if it has already been launched. The FAQs answer complementary questions customers could have and anticipates challenging questions from executive leadership.
Writing a thorough and precise PRFAQ is a lot of work but also a lot of fun. Over time, it has become my favorite type of narrative document at Amazon. It allows for creativity and the exploration of the emotional aspect of what can excite customers. It offers the opportunity to trigger emotions and engage readers.
As a Product Manager, an important part of my job is to convince my executive leadership and get their buy-in to secure funding for my new products. For that matter, using the Working Backwards process and nailing down the insights in a PRFAQ has proven to be an invaluable tool. Today it's my go-to whenever I need to prove my product will delight my customers, motivate my teams, persuade and influence my stakeholders, convince my executive leadership, and ultimately push my project forward.

So, whether you're just starting out or you're a seasoned product manager, Working Backwards and PRFAQ will help you build better products. I highly recommend giving it a try. In this blog post, I will share my PRFAQs learnings and insights, and provide a guide on how you too can apply it to your projects.

The PRFAQ document consists of 4 main parts:
The Press Release, written using customer-centric language, is not just about highlighting the features or benefits of the new product, but it's also about creating an emotional connection with customers by imagining how they will feel and what they will say when they experience the product. In the press release, you reinforce and put front and center the most important customer needs and benefits and you walk the reader step by step through the end-to-end customer experience. I love the approach because it clarifies how customers will perceive the product when it launches, it helps shape your thinking about your product, and it forces you to think from the customer's perspective instead of just from the perspective of the business. In essence, a press release is a powerful tool for driving customer-focused innovation. By imagining how customers will react to the new product and putting their needs at the center of the narrative, you are better able to develop products that truly meet the needs and desires of your customers.

FAQs complement the press release in several ways, including vetting the idea, getting into the details of how it will work, and answering key questions triggered by the press release. With FAQs, you will thoroughly assess your project and make informed decisions.
There are two types of FAQs: External FAQs (also called Customer FAQs) and Internal FAQs (also called stakeholder FAQs). External FAQs address complementary questions customers could have after reading the press release. For example: How does it work? What is the price? How do I get started with the feature? Moreover, it is important to include all relevant FAQs that enable your customers to fully comprehend the feature and its benefits, motivating them to take action and ultimately use or purchase your product.
On the other hand, Internal FAQs anticipate challenging questions from senior leadership, partner teams, and internal stakeholders. It uncovers risks and helps assess the feasibility of the idea. Make sure your FAQs reflect accurately the state of your project and do not hide or ignore difficult questions. Some common internal FAQs include: Why do we think the product will have a high impact on customers and the business? What other solutions were considered and rejected? What risks do we anticipate? What is the financial projection? How many heads count do we need for this?
FAQs are a valuable tool that enables you to evolve and refine your product by addressing hotly debated topics and considering tradeoffs and alternatives before turning your idea into reality. By answering key questions, FAQs ensure that the final decision is well-informed and takes into account all relevant factors.

Mock-ups play a crucial role as they enable the reader to visualize and better understand the customer experience. They serve as an illustration that complements the written content and provides a more comprehensive understanding of the concept. Visuals also allow the reader to imagine how customers will discover and use the product. Early concepts can be as simple as basic whiteboard drawings or wireframes. As the project progresses and the idea becomes clearer and more mature, the visual fidelity can increase to match. Sketching, storyboarding, and wireframing are all useful tools for creating visuals.
I am a visual person, and mock-ups are an essential part of my product development process. I like to collaborate with a UX designer early on to better understand the customer's experience and visualize the end product. Introducing visuals early on in the development process allows me to clearly and engagingly communicate my ideas, ensuring they meet my customers' needs. Moreover, it also helps me write the PRFAQ more quickly and effectively.

Appendices complement the document. They provide additional supporting data and information about the project and are mainly used to add additional information as the project evolves and matures, like technical designs, financials, customer research data, or insights on the addressable market.

Now that we’ve learned about the PRFAQ and how to structure it, let's discuss the reasons why I consider it an essential tool for developing a new product. Essentially, the PRFAQ serves 3 important purposes that are essential for successful product innovation:

1. Clarify your thinking and become the expert on your product. Writing helps you acquire a comprehensive understanding of your customer's requirements and the strategies to fulfill them. Consequently, you will become well-versed in your product's features and capabilities
2. Prioritize the most important. Using a PRFAQ helps you distill your thoughts and focus on the most essential aspects of your product. There is no reward for extra pages or unnecessary words, as clarity and conciseness are key. One trap I fall into in my early days of writing PRFAQs was to include too much information, too many customer benefits, too many use cases, and too many FAQs which diluted the message and made reviews less efficient. Over time, I learned that my goal was not to explain everything that I had accomplished but to share a refined view of my work. As a PM, it is your responsibility to make difficult decisions about what to include and what to leave out.
3. Enhance with feedback. As Bill Car explained in his book Working Backwards “the PRFAQ process creates a framework for rapidly iterating and incorporating feedback and reinforces a detailed, data-oriented, and fact-based method of decision making”. This is one of the primary factors that contribute to the effectiveness of the process. Whenever I create a PRFAQ, I observe this dynamic firsthand. While I initially begin writing the document on my own, over time it evolves to become a collective effort of my team, my organization, and eventually AWS as a whole. The input and feedback from my team members significantly enhance the document until it reaches a point where it is detailed enough, agreed upon, and ready to go to get built.
   
   What I like

• PRFAQ raises the bar on your thinking and customer obsession just because you can not write a good document unless you understand the material deeply.
• PRFAQ functions as a collaborative tool for promoting innovation. Its effectiveness lies in its ability to gather diverse perspectives from numerous individuals. Although a primary author writes the document, others provide feedback and contribute to it, resulting in a document with input from many contributors. In fact, it's not uncommon for documents to have involvement from several dozen contributors. PRFAQ thus serves as an effective means of harnessing the collective thinking of a team or multiple teams.
• The PRFAQ process helps scale innovation. A well-written PRFAQ provides any development team with the necessary information to produce the desired software. This mechanism simplifies the product development process and eliminates potential miscommunication.
• By using PRFAQs, the company can avoid investing in half-baked projects or ideas that lack internal support, which enables them to focus their resources on the most promising opportunities and make well-informed decisions.

Best practices

• although I know some of my colleagues at Amazon will disagree with me, in my opinion, not all features require a complete PRFAQ. I firmly believe that time is a critical factor in business, and creating a full-fledged PRFAQ takes time. Therefore, if the benefits to the customer and business opportunities are crystal clear, or if it is merely an improvement to an existing feature, a detailed Business Requirement Document (BRD) can suffice. This process is quicker and streamlined, enabling teams to start developments more rapidly. Ultimately, my goal as a PM is to deliver value to my customers as quickly as possible. Thus, I always consider using a BRD when appropriate to enhance efficiency.
• It can be tempting to immediately start writing a PRFAQ when you have a great idea, especially when you are under pressure to deliver new features quickly. However, as one of my previous posts on Working Backwards explains, skipping product discovery can lead to failure and a difficult PRFAQ process. Therefore, it's important to deeply understand your customers, identify their problems and opportunities, envision potential solutions, and prioritize the best one before writing the PRFAQ. By thoroughly going through the Working Backwards process, the resulting PRFAQ will be much more compelling.
• Even though one of the PRFAQ goals is to preserve developer time by avoiding developer teams working on half-backed projects, we must avoid waterfall and involve technical teams early on. I personally feel really strongly about involving at least one software developer and one UX designer right from the start of the PRFAQ process. They bring a crucial perspective to the project, make the first version more advanced and help diffuse the idea and get buy-in internally. It’s a must-have for me today to build that trio at the really start of the PRFAQ process.

Tips & Lessons Learned

• Be ready for an extensive review process. One valuable lesson I learned is that when presenting a PRFAQ, you shouldn't anticipate unanimous approval without any feedback. I used to take feedback personally. It was a mistake. I now strive to be receptive to feedback, recognizing that it will benefit my product as it undergoes multiple rounds of review.
• To begin the FAQs, include five External FAQs, and another five Internal FAQs. As you continue to receive feedback from various sources, make sure to capture common questions and turn them into additional FAQs.
• If you work for a startup or are an entrepreneur, you may think PRFAQs are only beneficial to large corporations. I can tell you it’s not true. If I were to launch a new business tomorrow and create a new software product, this would be my go-to approach without a doubt

In conclusion, the Working Backwards and PRFAQ processes are invaluable tools for any business building new products or services. These processes allow for a customer-focused approach to product development, saving valuable time and resources in the process. As PM, I have seen first-hand the benefits of these processes, and I strongly recommend them to anyone starting the creation of a new product. Looking back, I wish I had known about these processes 10 years ago when I was an entrepreneur. They would have helped me tremendously in building my start-up, staying customer-focused, and ultimately saving developer time by building the right things.

I hope you enjoy this article. If you have questions please reach out, I’d be happy to help!

Let’s build something great together!
Arnaud