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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
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@ejames_c
8/ "Can't you do this with simple hypothesis —> conditions for success written statements?" For quick iteration cycles I think it makes sense to write hypothesis statements down. So you know exactly WHY you're doing this particular product iteration.
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
As I shift back into build mode, I'm reminded that much of the value of writing product docs is really so that you can't lie to yourself. You're building this feature/making this change — but what's the hypothesis? What's the information you hope to generate?
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
9/ But the primary benefit of the PR/FAQ is that it forces you to think from the customer's perspective. It's particularly unforgiving in this way. Customers don't give a shit about your features. They care about how it solves THEIR problems.
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
10/ Implication: use the PR/FAQ as a check-in test. I currently pause to write/update one between multiple iterations, in order to help check if I'm rigorously uncovering what matters. Which is a fancy way of saying "am I asking the right questions?"
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
11/ The general principle behind the PR/FAQ is that you must answer: 1. Who's the customer 2. What's the problem you're trying to solve. 3. What's the solution (and you need to explain to the customer, not to investors, not to yourself)
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
12/ 4. Would they reasonably adopt this solution? (Because you're asking for a behaviour change.) 5. What's the TAM, is it big enough to be worth doing. As a forcing function for good thinking, the PR section MUST be 1 page.
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
13/ Bryar told me that at Amazon, most product ideas died at Question 5. In practice, as a builder outside Amazon, Q5 might not matter as much. Amazon is a multi-billion dollar company, so bets must have a shot of moving the bottom line. Their bar is naturally quite high.
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
14/ Your bar can be significantly lower. But low doesn't mean no rigour. The failure mode I've often most seen wrt the PR/FAQ are builders feeling uncomfortable, and then calling the PR/FAQ a waste of time. Only to hit "who are the customers?" problems further down the road.
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
15/ Further proof that the PR method works more broadly: - Tony Fadell wrote one before he started writing Build. (It's in the book.) - Steven Sinofsky explains that the Windows marketing team wrote a mock PR ahead of the Windows 7 building cycle.
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088. Planning the Most Important Windows Ever
There is no more important project at Microsoft. There's no more important software project in the world. —BillG speaking at the Windows 7 Vision meeting July 27, 2007
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
16/ Ok, that's all I have for now. If you'd like more updates, follow me on Twitter. Or subscribe to my newsletter here: commoncog.com/blog/subscribe I write from practice, so I plan to write a longer retrospective on the PR/FAQ process once I've got more reps in.
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