A PRFAQ (Press Release + Frequently Asked Question) is a framework for articulating in writing an innovation capturing the key facts, assumptions, and hypotheses for strategic decision making. It’s an evolving document to debate and discuss an idea. The PRFAQ document contains four parts: The Press Release, the Customer FAQs, the Internal FAQs, and the Appendix.
The PRFAQ framework addresses several problems for an innovator (founder, product/program leader, researcher, etc.). First, many people don’t put enough critical thought into their ideas because we have trained them to create a “bullet point outline” in a pitch deck as the starting point. This not only bypasses critical thinking, and doesn’t leave room for deep thinking. Second, they don’t create a clear articulation of the customer, the problem, the solution, or other aspects of the innovation, finding themselves making up as they go. Worse, they rely on presentation skills or authority instead of the merits of an idea. Third, innovators don’t know how to inspire others to act or make clear asks. It’s not unusual for people to leave a conversation confused if anything was decided, why should they care, or what are the next steps.
Using the PRFAQ framework and method addresses these three problems head on. Innovators think deeply and critically about their idea, learn to articulate it clearly, and inspire people to act.
The method to develop a PRFAQ and the resulting document is based on five principles: 1) Customer-Centric, 2) Aspirational, 3) Clear, Concise, and Coherent, 4) Truth-Seeking, and 5) Strategic Decision Making. Those principles ground the research, writing, and reviews of a PRFAQ.
A crucial benefit of the PRFAQ Framework is that creating one is as important, if not more important, than the artifact (the document) that’s being created. The writing, the reviewing in collaboration with others, and the revising hold the secret to evolving a good idea into a great one.
You write the press release and the Customer FAQs as if the future is already here. They set the tone for the aspiration of the innovation and paint a bold and audacious vision that’s feasible in the not so distant future. That opens the door for questions from the team, investors, and decision makers. You answer those questions in the Internal FAQs and in the appendix.
The PRFAQ has a single owner who’s in charge of writing the document and facilitating the review meetings to evolve the idea into a viable, feasible, usable, and valuable solution. The goal is to evolve an opportunity through a truth-seeking process, not to sell an idea with a pitch deck.
There are many use cases for the PRFAQ Framework. Founders (and pre-founders) use it to develop their startup idea and tell their story to team members, candidates, investors, and customers. Product, tech, and program leaders use a PRFAQ to discuss new products, programs, or services or changes to existing ones. HR, IT, finance, and other G&A teams use it to define new programs, policies, or products for employees.
Adopting the PRFAQ framework and mindset is straightforward. It requires the initial commitment to learn and get your team onboard. Like any new framework or change, it feels awkward or clunky the first time. However, it pays off quickly in better alignment with vision, mission, and strategy. Team members (and funders) become more committed, and your project won’t be bouncing around in countless meetings to clarify and re-align the goals. It fits perfectly as a pre-OKR, pre-pitch deck, and pre-business plan instrument.
Finally, a PRFAQ is a document that focus on vision and strategy, not on tactics and detailed plans. It’s not a substitute to a product requirements document (PRD), a marketing plan, a project roadmap, or even for Objectives & Key Results (OKRs). The PRFAQ is the document that precedes those.
The Framework Template
You write your PRFAQ in Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or another text editor. There are several aspects about the formatting that are important. On The PRFAQ Framework book, I go into the specific details of how to format and style your document to deliver the best outcome. You can also download PRFAQ templates. A few ground rules: 1) Don’t use images or diagrams, 2) Use only black text, and no highlights, 3) Have line numbers turned on (for easy referencing), 4) Simplify typography, including in headings, and 5) avoid bullet points and numbered lists.
You write in narrative form with fully formed sentences using precise writing. The most important aspect of the PRFAQ Framework template is that it’s only six pages or fewer. The first page is the “Press Release”, the second page is the Customer FAQs, and the third to sixth pages are the Internal FAQs. The appendix is optional and there isn't an expectation that people will read it. This length and format are grounded in research and tried-and-true practices.
The Press Release - Page 1
The press release in a PRFAQ is like a traditional press release. Foremost, it’s not meant to be a real press release that you send to journalists or a newswire service. It’s an aspirational future state of what you want to achieve at launch time. The goal is to get the team to agree and feel inspired by the vision.
There are eleven elements to the press release page. You start by picking a date when the product, program, or service will launch. You also pick a city from where you'll send this news from. Next, you have a headline and a sub-headline, like in a regular press release.
Following that, you have the seven paragraphs that make up the story. Each paragraph serves a unique purpose. They are:
Paragraph 1 — Lead — A few short sentences succinctly answering the five Ws (Who, what, where, when, and why).
Paragraph 2 — Problem — A description of the key need, pain point, or desire the customers have that are not being solved today. This emphasizes why this problem is urgent, big, painful, growing, eminent, and/or poorly solved.
Paragraph 3 — Solution — An overview of what is the current solution being proposed that addresses the problem in the paragraph above.
Paragraph 4 — Internal Quote — A quote from you or an executive in the organization that describes the motivations behind this project.
Paragraph 5 — How It Works — A description of how customers will use this innovation to solve the problem described in the second paragraph.
Paragraph 6 — Customer Quote — A fictitious quote from a customer that describes their problem before this solution, and how this solution made that problem manageable or inexistent.
Paragraph 7 — How to Get Started — In this aspirational scenario, explain where customers go or what they need to do to get started with the product, service, or program.
The Customer FAQs - Page 2
The Customer FAQs take the second page of your PRFAQ. It’s between three and eight questions and answer that are top of mind questions for your customers after they read the press release. Here’s the tricky bit. You are actually not writing the FAQs that your customer will ask, but the questions that the people reviewing the PRFAQ think they will ask. More than that, you are filtering by questions that have value to the strategic conversation to follow.
You write the Customer FAQs in the present tense and, similarly to the press release, they represent a future aspirational state. Your Q&A will fall into one of seven categories: Value, Usability, Plans & Pricing, Privacy, Migration (or change management), Risk, and Compatibility & Integrations.
The Internal FAQs - Page 3 to 6
This is the longest part of your document. You include twelve to eighteen questions covering two to four pages. These are questions and answers for you, your team, your stakeholders, and your decision makers (or funders). They represent the reality of this project, where it is, what you need to deliver on the vision, what your team has done so far, etc.
The Internal FAQs section is where the reviewers will spend the most time debating and discussing across four primary dimensions: 1) The value for the customer, 2) the feasibility (can you and your team get it done?), 3) the usability (ease of use/participate), and 4) the viability (is it sustainable to build and maintain?).
The Appendix
A PRFAQ is complete and coherent without requiring an appendix. As you review and revise the document with people in different functions and expertise, more details in the appendix help go one level deeper. The PRFAQ is a strategy and vision document, so it doesn’t include detailed tactical plans. It’s too easy to stuff the appendix with dozens of detailed pages explaining what you are doing and how. If that’s your document, you overdone it.
If you feel inclined to include an appendix, it's no more than six pages, and you limit each topic on the appendix to one or two pages. Topics that you consider including are: Simple financial models, UX Research analysis or data, summary of customer survey or market research, sample quotes from customers, wireframes/mockups/renderings, adoption projections, simplified project timeline, or reference articles, books, or links.
The Method
Writing a PRFAQ is not simply about filling out a template on Microsoft Word or on a Google Doc, or asking GPT to generate the text for you. The book explains the method in detail. The foundation of the process is to treat your PRFAQ as a product itself, with customers (your team, stakeholders, decision-makers), and a problem that’s solving (which opportunity should the team pursue?).
Similar to the Lean Startup build-measure-learn loop, you adopt the learn-write-listen loop. First, you learn information from research (including customer discovery), your and your team’s experience, and other activities that already happened (e.g., a proof-of-concept, a previous project, etc.). Second, you write a version of the PRFAQ — which itself follows the system collect-collate-compose. Last, you engage with folks in review sessions to listen to their feedback. That leads to more lessons, and it uncovers questions that haven’t been answered (or decided) yet, requiring you and your collaborators to go discover even more.
If there’s no convergence on the idea, it's a signal the opportunity is not worth pursuing. If there is convergence, you move from an exploration mindset to a decision one. If you are calling the shots, you decide if you’ll pursue the opportunity or not. By now, your innovation has evolved to a different (and better) one from what you started with. If you need a decision maker, you use the PRFAQ to seek their backing. If done correctly, your decision makers contributed to the PRFAQ prior to a decision event.
Conclusion
The PRFAQ Framework is the most effective system to explore an opportunity space and develop a valuable, viable, feasible, and usable product, service, or program. Its collaborative nature helps teams feel included and uses each functional role strength to contribute to it. Organizations that use PRFAQs are more aligned, move faster with fewer clarification/re-alignment meetings, and are more likely to deliver great results for the business and their customers.
