Most guides to writing an executive summary miss the key point: The job of the executive summary is to sell, not to describe.

This from Guy Kawasaki’s recent post, The Art of the Executive Summary. Guy’s article is structured towards pitching an idea to a potential investor. We’re going to apply the same rationale to the communication that is key to successful product development – communication from the team, to stakeholders and sponsors.We also communicate with people outside of our team. We communicate to set expectations with customers, users, and clients.We communicate with sponsors, customers, and others who fund our software development. Without these channels of strategic communication, we won’t have a project, or worse, won’t have a customer when we’re done. External communication is strategic communication.