What is the Amazon Working Backwards Process?
The Amazon Working Backwards method, or PR FAQs is a written and audited submission process to validate customer needs and business viability before building products or services.
It involves imagining that the product or service is launching in a week and writing a press release (including FAQs) for it. It’s basically Amazon’s version of a PRD.
By describing the customer, the product and the problem the product solves, the Amazon Working Backwards Process sharpens your thinking and your discovery.
PR FAQs can be refined over a period of months and take multiple different iterations before a panel signs off the final version for development. The process is designed to be rigorous in order to keep Amazon development resources focused on needle moving activities.
In this guide we’ll take you through the Amazon Working Backwards / PR FAQs process, including tips and tricks for how to write one, how to evaluate one and share a free PR FAQs template.
Free Amazon Working Backwards PR FAQs Template
FREE Hustle Badger PR FAQs template: Google Doc | Notion
Create a FREE account to access the PR/FAQs template
How does the Amazon Working Backwards Process work
The team proposing an idea for a product or service imagines that they are one week before launch. They:
- Craft a press release describing the need and the product
- Craft a frequently asked questions (FAQs) document which contains
- External FAQs (questions they might receive from future customers)
- Internal FAQs (questions they might receive from adjacent teams, different functional stakeholders and so on).
The documents are then reviewed by a team of relevant stakeholders, iterated , and hopefully greenlit for development. The iteration cycle could take many rounds, and the stakeholder team will encompass a diverse range of perspectives.
The world outside Amazon discovered this process when Ian McAllister, a Director of Product at Amazon (and now at Uber), answered a question on Quora.
Advantages of the Amazon Working Backwards Process
“Many companies make guesses or inferences about what their customers want. They imagine, or have hunches or feelings. Unfortunately, this increases the odds of being wrong. If you want to be customer- centric, or even customer-obsessed, you need to move from imagining to knowing. This requires the team to spend time getting to know their customer, and finding out what delights them and what pain points they have.”
Amazon white paper, Building A Cloud Operating Model, July 22 2020
The Amazon Working Backwards process helps teams clarify their thinking, refine the proposition and truly understand the customer.
It stops things being built which are a waste of time, not needed now or poorly thought through. It therefore saves money.
In essence, it’s Amazon’s version of a PRD (product requirements document).
By writing the press release they can see:
- Is it exciting?
- Is it a big opportunity?
- Does it take away pain and make things easier and better?
- Does it solve a need for a customer segment in a compelling enough way that they’ll adopt it?
- Do all aspects of the product or service make sense?
- Does it cause any conflicts internally?
- Is it possible to do?
- How will the obstacle be solved?
- Does it make sense to do, and does it make sense to do it now?
‘If the benefits listed don’t sound very interesting or exciting to customers, then perhaps they’re not (and shouldn’t be built). Instead, the product manager should keep iterating on the press release until they’ve come up with benefits that actually sound like benefits. Iterating on a press release is a lot less expensive than iterating on the product itself (and quicker!).’
Ian McAllister, on Quora, writing about the Amazon Working Backwards process
Strengths of the process are
- Customer centricity – by forcing the product innovator to begin with customer needs and work backwards, customer needs and solutions remain central
- Saves money – it’s expensive, but building the wrong product is very expensive
- Internal innovation – any team can make a proposal and have it critiqued, thereby encouraging internal innovation
The process embeds customer centric thinking through the template, which forces critical thinking through that lens.
‘Because the documents are written for customers, it immediately puts each reviewer in the shoes of the customer assessing the proposed launch. The collective customer understanding of all collaborators means that the idea can be rapidly improved, creating a really compelling customer-centric vision.’
Richard Russell, Founder at Working Backwards, ex-Senior Manager of Product Development at Amazon
Why use the Amazon Working Backwards Process?
It’s the obvious point, but some of Amazon’s most successful products were launched using the Working backwards process. Think Kindle, Prime, or AWS.
The Amazon Working Backwards process forces teams to consider the future product and customer base. It assists Amazon to:
1. Build better products
Audience, need, and therefore solutions are more tightly defined, with greater business rationale, and more proof points of future success, while pet projects / emotional attachment are abandoned.
2. Build with focus
Only build what is necessary for the press release; avoid add ons or bloat.
The Amazon Working Backwards Process is not a simple, easy or even cheap process; but it’s designed to maintain focus:
‘Done correctly, the working backwards process is a huge amount of work, but it saves you even more work later. The working backwards process is not designed to be easy. It’s designed to save huge amounts of work on the back end, and make sure we’re actually building the right thing.’
Jeff Bezos, talking about the Amazon Working Backwards process
3. Execute faster
By identifying low value ideas or projects early on it helps maximize company velocity overall by avoiding wastage.
4. Create products that sell
If the product team isn’t excited about the press release, why should anyone else be?
‘[replying to a question] ‘Is the Working Backwards process optional? It sounds great but it seems like a lot of work.” Oh boy, how do we begin…Well, the Working Backwards process should not be optional unless you know a better way. And you shouldn’t know a better way until you’ve tried the Working Backwards process several times.’
Jeff Bezos, talking about the Amazon Working Backwards process
How to execute the Amazon Working Backwards Process well
There are 2 components to the Amazon Working Backwards process:
- The PR FAQs documents themselves
- The review meeting
Putting together an Amazon PR FAQs
The Press Release is designed to be a 1 to 1.5 page vision statement which clearly articulates the need, the customer set and why customers are intended to get excited about the product.
The FAQs are primarily intended for internal consumption and cover all the questions leadership might answer, such as ‘How big is this market? Why do you think you can charge that price? Will this project be profitable? Does it impact other teams or departments?’.
We have collated a PR FAQ template for both here, including example PR FAQs, and tips to fill out the FAQ questions.
Hustle Badger PR FAQ template: Google Doc | Notion
Create a FREE account to access the PR/FAQs template
Rules for writing a good press release
- Write from a future, hypothetical perspective – you’re working backwards
- Clearly identify the customer
- Define their problem or need
- Describe the solution which will solve that problem or need, and how
- Persuade the customer to adopt the solution
- Critique yourself: how exciting / credible is this really?
Rules for writing good FAQs
- Think through the topic from a business perspective: is it a big market? Do customers really have this need? How much will all of this cost us and will it pay back? Can we succeed via this strategy?
- Be honest: if there are conditions for success, state them clearly. There’s no point fudging answers as a review will pick up these issues anyway.
- Don’t take shortcuts: it is a lot of work, and that’s for a reason. You’re requesting that the company invests money in your idea
Preparing well for a review of PR FAQs as an author
- Get input on your thinking early: don’t wait to show your manager or other leaders a perfect document. Get their input and questions early on in the drafting cycle.
- Take the feedback you’re getting on the concept seriously: If folks are raising legitimate concerns, even if you don’t want to hear them, write them down and consider them. Does the customer base need to be redefined? Does the solution need to be pivoted? This will make your end output stronger in the long run, and more likely to get approval.
- Try to be unemotional: It’s human to want to argue your point. But step back and try to evaluate your own proposal imagining that your colleague down the hall had come up with it.
- If you don’t know how to do all the things in the FAQs, learn: This is a great development opportunity and will make you a stronger product manager in the long run.
How to make Amazon Working Backwards | PR FAQ Reviews effective
- Iterate the template: Customize the template to your needs. Be pragmatic and design a process which works for you.
- Get in early: Encourage your team to share thinking early. It prevents folks investing a ton of time into a PR/FAQ which sucks in its current form. Repeated cycles of feedback are healthy.
- Be encouraging: A healthy organizational culture is where everyone feels comfortable to share their thinking. Be kind and be constructive when reviewing documents. The only exception to the be kind rule is if someone is repeatedly falling to take onboard feedback. In this situation you might be more forceful.
- Widen the review circle: Don’t only include seniors or managers. Encourage the author to add other stakeholders whose perspectives might be valuable. Encourage them to go beyond ‘who can get this greenlit’ to make sure the thinking is as robust as possible.
- Make it a coaching opportunity: Resist the urge to say ‘just do x y z’. Step back, make the feedback more high level and explain how you thought through the problem.
- Get really clear on the problem: the first thing to nail is the problem. Is it a real problem? Is it a big enough problem? Is it exciting to solve? If the answer to those is no, there’s no point jumping into the rest of the topics.
- Ensure the solution actually solves the problem: For example, it might solve the problem for some of the consumer base with need, but miss some out. If that’s the case, either the consumer sizing or the solution needs another look.
- Look for ways to make the solution better: Sometimes folks overcomplicate or constrain solutions because they themselves work within team or code silos. Look for ways that the solution can be simple, elegant and effective, and think big
‘Is the author assuming the product has to be profitable in year 1? If so, what could they accomplish if they had a 3-5 year horizon for profitability? Have they assumed they can only build a solution with the resources they have on hand today? If so, what could they build with 5x the resources?’
Ian McAllister, ‘Applying Amazon’s Working Backwards Process – for Leaders’
Finally, if you are going to apply the Amazon PR FAQ process, do so consistently and don’t bypass it.
If you sometimes apply the Amazon Working Backwards process and sometimes don’t, the process loses utility and credibility.
Wrap up on the Amazon Working Backwards Process
Effectively the Amazon PR FAQ process is their PRD process. It’s an effective method to ensure that teams start with the customer need, ideate a solution and create a robust plan to deliver.
When writing PR FAQs and when reviewing them, it’s worth remembering Jeff Bezos’ 3 parameters for evaluating an idea.
They are:
- Is it a big idea?
- Is it something we should be doing?
- Is there a legitimate plan to succeed?
Answering those questions well is really what the Amazon Working Backwards Process is all about.
Hustle Badger Resources
Create a FREE account to access the following templates:
* [Template] Amazon Leadership Principles Interview Cheatsheet: Google Doc
* [Template] Think Like Jeff Bezos Cheatsheet: Google Doc
* [Template] Amazon PR FAQ Template: Notion | Google Doc
Resources
What does Amazon mean by working backwards?
The Amazon Working Backwards process is a product or service development methodology developed at Amazon. Teams are encouraged to start by identifying and sizing the customer base and their needs, and to work backwards from that to develop a robust proposal for a product or service. They are then encouraged to imagine it’s the day before the launch of that product, to craft a press release, and to work backwards from there; i.e. refine the press release, only develop what is in the press release. It’s a robust and rigorous methodology, aimed at maximising company velocity by preventing wastage, and embedding customer first principles at every layer of the company’s activities.
What do Amazon leaders start with and work backwards?
Amazon’s first leadership principle is Customer Obsession. They state that: ‘Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.’ Amazon has various practices to embed this leadership principle within the company, including the Working Backwards Process.
Where can I find an Amazon Working Backwards or a PR FAQ template?
You can find an Amazon Working Backwards template here. It includes a PR (Press Release) template, with examples of how to fill it in, and an FAQs (frequently asked questions) template to help put together a killer PR/FAQs.
Where can I find Amazon PR FAQ examples?
The best PR FAQ example was shared by Ian McAllister on Linkedin. Ian McAllister was the person who originally told the world about Amazon’s PR FAQ process, and the example he shares is great. Get it here.
