Release & Communication · master area

Release Brief to Client

What changed. What to expect. What is not yet available. How to reach the team. Shared before enablement — so the client is part of the rollout, not the audience for it.

Owners: PO Phase it lives in: How We Build (Volume IV) The corpus principle this enacts: Trust is the product — and trust is built by what you tell the client before they ask.

Where it lives in the chain

• How We Build · The release moment, release brief, CS handoff — the canon

What the brief contains

1. What changed — one paragraph in client-speak, drawing from the changelog but rewritten for the audience. "Graders now have a one-key shortcut to move to the next exam. The grading session is faster."
2. What to expect — "You may notice this from Monday. Adoption will roll out over a week starting with five schools, expanding to all by Friday."
3. What is not yet available — explicit exclusions. "Not yet in Hebrew. Not yet on tablets. Both planned for the next cycle."
4. The prediction — "We expect grading sessions to drop from 47 minutes to under 15. We will measure on 2026-06-25 and share the result."
5. How to reach the team — the support channel, the escalation path, the PO's email.
6. The signal date — "Our next bi-weekly sync after the check date is 2026-06-29; we'll bring the result there."

How to do this

• Written 3 days before release. Reviewed by the trio. Not by marketing — the voice is the team's, not the brand's.
• Length: half a page. Anything longer goes unread. Anything shorter undersells.
• Shared the day before enablement. Not at enablement. Not after.
• Followed up at the signal date — with the result.

What good practice looks like

A client opens an email Friday morning. They know what changed by Monday lunchtime. They know what to expect. They know what's not in this release and what's coming. They know how to reach the team. They know when they'll hear about the result.

When the result arrives — predicted 15 minutes, measured 12, the new shortcut absorbed more time than predicted — the client reads it as chain evidence, not marketing. That is the relationship the corpus is engineered to produce.

Related crafts

• CS Handoff — the internal counterpart
• Client Notes — what surfaces from conversations
• Changelog Generation — what the release brief draws on
• Prediction Naming to Client — what the brief commits to