Put the decision and its boundary first
Open with the specific choice, its owner and the deadline. State what is in scope and what the memo does not decide. Readers should not have to work through company histories to discover why the research matters.
Name the constraint that makes the choice necessary: limited capacity, a customer problem, an expiring opportunity or a trade-off between objectives. Separate a real deadline from a preference to move quickly.
Compare credible alternatives on the same criteria
Include the current approach or doing nothing when it is a genuine option. Define evaluation criteria before summarizing the cases. Otherwise, it is easy to select criteria that make a preferred recommendation look inevitable.
For each alternative, list expected benefit, required capability, resource commitment and principal uncertainty. Use ranges or qualitative judgments when evidence is limited. Do not convert weak information into a confident numerical ranking.
Attach each important inference to evidence
Keep the argument short: observation, possible explanation, relevance to this decision and limitation. A link alone is not an explanation. State what the source supports and where your interpretation begins.
Include the strongest counterargument to your recommendation. Explain what would have to be true for the competing option to be better. This helps the reviewer challenge the decision without redoing the entire research process.
End with ownership, a test and a review trigger
An illustrative product memo could recommend a limited onboarding change rather than a full redesign. Specify who ships it, which eligible users see it, the behavior to observe and the conditions that would halt expansion.
Archive the evidence date and decision rationale. Schedule a review around an event or sufficient observation, not just a ceremonial meeting. A useful memo preserves why the decision was reasonable with the information available.
Use this worksheet for your decision
Copy this into your notes. Leave unknowns visible instead of filling gaps with guesses.
Decision, owner and deadline: Scope and constraint: Alternatives: Shared criteria: Evidence and inference: Strongest counterargument: Recommendation: Test owner and guardrails: Review trigger:Download the text worksheet ↓
Find evidence in the archives
Choose a supporting case and a counterexample with a different outcome. Read their sources and check whether their conditions match yours.
Cases to practice with (read and check the underlying sources):
Bring your question to the cases
Search a company or topic in the app, read the cases and ask follow-up questions to compare approaches.