I’ve been spending a lot of time at my day job churning with team over engineering-change management. I had a few people mention the “write a press release”-pattern and found a great summary of it.

For new initiatives a product manager typically starts by writing an internal press release announcing the finished product. The target audience for the press release is the new/updated product’s customers, which can be retail customers or internal users of a tool or technology. Internal press releases are centered around the customer problem, how current solutions (internal or external) fail, and how the new product will blow away existing solutions.

Inspiration and references

Product press release

Name the product in a way the reader (i.e. your target customers) will understand.
Describe who the market for the product is and what benefit they get. One sentence only underneath the title.
Give a summary of the product and the benefit. Assume the reader will not read anything else so make this paragraph good.
Describe the problem your product solves.
Describe how your product elegantly solves the problem.
A quote from a spokesperson in your company.
Describe how easy it is to get started.
Provide a quote from a hypothetical customer that describes how they experienced the benefit.
Wrap it up and give pointers where the reader should go next.

Interruptions

  • I keep forgetting label for=

  • Should buttons be title- or sentence- cased?

Reflections

  • Is a form more effective than a check-list? In this case, I think the original bulleted list is easier to understand.

  • Placeholders are a good place to put example text, rather than descriptions.