I had stumbled upon this great gem about how Amazon is doing product management a while ago. In short, it is about working backwards with regards to the usual product management deliverables, i.e. start with writing the press release about a product and iterate it until you and your stakeholders are satisfied. When you are done with that, start writing the Frequently Asked Questions. Make sure to put yourself into your customers shoes here (always helpful thing to do for a PM ;-) ). Then it is time to dive into the User Experience, i.e. by designing mockups. And last but not least, write the user manual.
I don’t think I can add much to the original article, as anyone who has developed a product before knows that we are talking about a big amount of work up front. Anybody who has done product development before without a clear vision or set of requirements knows that it pays off to think deeply before implementing your product in order to make sure it is the best it can be. The not so hidden gem about this technique: if a feature was not mentioned in the press release, it is probably not worth building, at least not in the first version (repeat three times after me: start with an MVP ;-) ). And that is an information that has the potential to save back all the hours spent on defining the product and more… .
