press-release — Write Product Press Releases Using Amazon’s Working Backwards Method

Skill Overview

press-release is a skill based on Amazon’s “Working Backwards” methodology. It enables product teams to write a customer-focused vision press release before starting development, defining customer value, aligning stakeholders, and validating early whether the product story truly holds up.

Use Cases

1. Validating value before launching a major initiative: You are preparing to invest in an important product or feature and want to confirm that its value to customers is real before writing the first line of the specification.
2. Aligning stakeholders: The team disagrees about “what exactly are we promising customers with this release?” A vision written as a press release gives everyone a shared document to discuss.
3. Rejecting weak ideas early: Test the product story by attempting to write a launch announcement—if the press release itself fails to persuade, the idea should be cut before it consumes engineering resources.

Core Features

1. Working Backwards press release generation: Produce a 1–1.5-page planning document following the Amazon PR/FAQ process, fully covering ten sections: headline, date and lead, introduction, customer problem, solution, executive quote, additional details, company description, call to action, and media contact. The document remains customer-focused throughout, emphasizing the problem being solved rather than the features being built.
2. Outcome-oriented writing review: Check each section step by step to ensure it focuses on customer outcomes. Automatically correct feature lists such as “includes AI, ML, and OCR technologies,” rewriting them as concrete statements such as “reduces invoice processing time by 60%.” Also ensure that problem statements are supported by data or customer insights rather than empty phrases like “solves inefficiency.”
3. Five-question persuasion test: After drafting, evaluate the press release with five questions: Will customers care? Can someone unfamiliar with the product understand the pain point? Are the benefits quantifiable? Can a non-expert understand it? After reading it, will anyone ask, “So what?” If any answer is unsatisfactory, revise the document with specific guidance until the story truly stands on its own.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Amazon’s Working Backwards method?

It is a product definition process popularized by Amazon: draft the press release and FAQ before writing any code. The press release must be written from the customer’s perspective, focus on the problem being solved, remain within 1–1.5 pages, and be compelling enough to make customers want the product. If you cannot write a press release that achieves this, the product concept itself may have a problem.

Why write the press release before writing code?

Because a press release is a “forcing function for clarity.” It forces the team to answer, “If the product were perfect, how would we introduce it to the world?” This shifts attention from technical features back to customer value. It is also an alignment tool: stakeholders can read and respond to the vision before engineering begins, preventing months of work on a poorly defined product.

Can this press release be used directly for the product launch?

No. This is a planning document, not marketing copy for launch day. Its purpose is to define and validate the product story before development and align the team. The skill explicitly identifies several anti-patterns: do not list feature specifications, overload the document with internal jargon, write empty phrases such as “revolutionary productivity gains,” or exaggerate—the press release must describe honestly what the product does. It is also not worth using for minor feature changes; doing so would be overengineering.