Key takeaways:
- Tech leaders use the PRFAQ Framework to think critically about their team's project, articulate the story clearly, and inspire their them to act.
- Tech leaders write their PRFAQ to ensure their teams are working on the most impactful projects.
- The PRFAQ is the best tool to develop a better vision and strategy for their tech projects, building a better story for non-engineers to understand the goals and risks.
PRFAQs are great tools for tech (engineering) leaders to discover, debate, and balance the needs of their teams, the business, and the customer. Tech leaders build and operate the software (and hardware) that serves the customer and the business. Often, they also own product, data, and AI teams. These leaders are the first to identify near and long-term needs that, if left unaddressed, lead to costly consequences for the business. A PRFAQ is a great way for tech leaders to surface those needs to a broader audience.
Leading technology and tech teams has intrinsic challenges. Tech leaders want to move fast, build reliable, scalable, extensible, and maintainable services while keeping their teams engaged and motivated. It’s a constant prioritization battle between doing new work, keep-the-lights-on (KTLO) work, and managing technical debt. By being the closest to the tech stack, these leaders, the engineers, and data scientists are the first to spot crucial insights. These are new opportunities, solutions to problems that weren’t possible before, or major risks brewing because of technical debt or deprecations of third-party solutions. Yet, they struggle to elevate these issues, often because of communication barriers dealing with less technical decision makers.
The PRFAQ framework works perfectly to help tech leaders bring up innovations. The methods involved in the creating the document will help them develop the story and the language to make it clearer for stakeholders to understand the impact and cost involved. It’s used for new project ideas, change or refactoring of existing services, and even for the deprecation of costly to maintain tech. The framework brings the important points to the surface without getting bogged down in the tech details.
PRFAQs lead to better tech initiatives. Their teams will feel included and encouraged to think critically about the customer and business consequences of their proposals. It facilitates spirited debates focused on the merits of a proposal, and not on egos, titles, or promotion schedules. It helps teams discover the cost-of-delay (CoD) and have realistic estimates/budget of the effort required, which leads to better prioritization during planning.
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Who’s this for?
Anyone leading technology and engineering decisions, including CTOs, Chief Data Officers, VPs of Engineering/Tech, VPs of Data/Analytics, Directors of Engineering, Engineering Managers, Technical Fellows, Distinguished Engineers, Tech Leads, Software Architects, Principal Engineers, etc.
What makes a PRFAQ great for tech leaders?
Tech leaders develop better storytelling and communication tools to discuss with their peers and leaders about their concerns, ideas, and approaches to better serve customers and the business.
Who are the collaborators for the PRFAQ?
If the innovation in the PRFAQ is a purely tech, with no new impact for customers, the tech team does it. They might include product managers (to help prioritize) and operations/finance teams (if there is a financial implication). If the innovation impacts the customer or on other teams, then product managers, designers, marketing, sales, and other tech teams get involved.
Who do they share the PRFAQ?
They share the PRFAQ with the tech team members who will work on the project, other engineers, data scientists, and product managers who need to know.
When is it not appropriate to use a PRFAQ?
PRFAQs should not be used as a substitute for architecture and technical design docs, project plans, or technical specifications. It should also not be used as a mechanism to review what they have done already, such as a retrospective, or for incidents.
