This material was originally posted here. It is reproduced here for posterities sake.
There is an approach called "working backwards" that is widely used at Amazon. They work backwards from the customer, rather than starting with an idea for a product and trying to bolt customers onto it. While working backwards can be applied to any specific product decision, using this approach is especially important when developing new products or features.
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.
If the benefits listed don't sound very interesting or exciting to customers, then perhaps they're not (and shouldn't be built). Instead, the product manager should keep iterating on the press release until they've come up with benefits that actually sound like benefits. Iterating on a press release is a lot less expensive than iterating on the product itself (and quicker!).
If the press release is more than a page and a half, it is probably too long. Keep it simple. 3-4 sentences for most paragraphs. Cut out the fat. Don't make it into a spec. You can accompany the press release with a FAQ that answers all of the other business or execution questions so the press release can stay focused on what the customer gets. My rule of thumb is that if the press release is hard to write, then the product is probably going to suck. Keep working at it until the outline for each paragraph flows.
Oh, and I also like to write press-releases in what I call "Oprah-speak" for mainstream consumer products. Imagine you're sitting on Oprah's couch and have just explained the product to her, and then you listen as she explains it to her audience. That's "Oprah-speak", not "Geek-speak".
Once the project moves into development, the press release can be used as a touchstone; a guiding light. The product team can ask themselves, "Are we building what is in the press release?" If they find they're spending time building things that aren't in the press release (overbuilding), they need to ask themselves why. This keeps product development focused on achieving the customer benefits and not building extraneous stuff that takes longer to build, takes resources to maintain, and doesn't provide real customer benefit (at least not enough to warrant inclusion in the press release).
Name the product in a way the reader (i.e. your target customers) will understand.
OpenMuseum
Describe who the market for the product is and what benefit they get. One sentence only underneath the title.
"Turn the city into a museum."
Give a summary of the product and the benefit. Assume the reader will not read anything else so make this paragraph good.
OpenMuseum is an app that enables grafitti artists to tag their art around the city so it be found by other users. It's like Foursquare or Yelp for grafiti, mosaics, murels and any other art not traditionally found in a museum.
Describe the problem your product solves.
- Artists who create art in the city have no way of letting people know that they've made something
- Users who want to see that art have no way to find it, or if they stumble upon a piece of great art, they have no way of knowing any information about it.
- No one is Collecting and Archiving this art.
Describe how your product elegantly solves the problem.
OpenMuseum enables users to find grafitti and other art around them in a map view. They can also tag a new grafitti or art work around them so other users can find it.
A quote from a spokesperson in your company.
"OpenMuseum gives grafitti artists a platform to showcase and lead people to their work. It's a bold statement: the museum is where the people choose it to be, and art is anything the people want it to be. OpenMuseum gives people the ability to search for and save the art that they they find valuable."
Describe how easy it is to get started. Just download OpenMuseum from the app store and sign up to get started.
Provide a quote from a hypothetical customer that describes how they experienced the benefit.
"I was always running into these awesome peices of grafitti in the city, but I never knew anything about them, or how to find more like them. OpenMuseum lets me find all the best grafitti in the city and opens my eyes to other art I would have never noticed."
Wrap it up and give pointers where the reader should go next. Download OpenMuseum from the app store and help turn the city into a museum.