AWS Events
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17:22 · 80K views · Feb 5, 2021
An AWS re:Invent session explaining Amazon's Working Backwards process, where teams start from customer needs and write a press release and FAQ (PR-FAQ) before building. It covers the five customer questions that frame the process.
HN cites it as the primary source for Amazon's Working Backwards method whenever product-definition approaches come up.
3 comments from Hacker News
Sounds good. Thank you for taking this the right way - I found it hard to articulate the criticism in a constructive way with few words, so it was verbose and I hoped for the best. Amazon, for all its faults, has this process well defined. These links may be helpful to you. Good Luck [LINK] [LINK] A nice video: this video
With all due respect to the author, I think the article kind of romanticizes start-up founders and their perils. Amazon famously dubs itself with being the biggest startup in the world. There's a company that espouses Clay Christensen's philosophy of building enduring businesses. Over the years, a lot has been said and written about how Amazon manages to do it, I mean, this is better demonstrated by Jeff, its founder, whose wealth went from $10B in 1997 to $1B in 2002/3, but still bet big on AWS (2003), Prime (2005), and Kindle (2007) in an unprecedented run of series of innovations that'd could have killed the company. -- "working backwards" I want to draw some parallels to the YC application process with how Amazon operates, from what I've read and what I've experienced as an ex-employee: A lot of product development is funded at Amazon after review of what's called a PR/FAQ doc [0] (this is the "working backwards from the customer" part). The PR needs to clearly articulate in a headline or two what the product is about; whilst the first paragraph must present a complete summary of what the product would be in its v1 form at launch. The next few paragraphs detail the current problem and the proposed solution interlaced by imaginary quotes from would-be customers; and the concluding paragraph has a clear call-to-action on exactly how customers can make use of the proposed solution. If you've ever filled out a YC form, you'd find yourself going through a similar exercise. And
This is just Amazon's "Working Backwards" methodology [1] expressed simplistically. There's also a book about written by key Amazon people. [2] A core part of the Working Backwards idea is to start out by writing a fake press release, even for internal projects. This helps crystallize exactly what is important and what isn't, as it forces you to express your goal precisely and succinctly as well as define what it brings to the table. [1] this video [2] [LINK]