Working Backwards

What It Is

Working Backwards is Amazon’s product development methodology. The core insight: start with the customer problem and work backward to the solution, not the other way around.

Most teams work forward: “We have this technology/capability/idea — what can we build with it?” Working Backwards inverts this: “What problem does the customer have? What would the ideal solution look like? Now, how do we build it?”

The mechanism: Write an internal press release and FAQ before building anything. If you can’t write a compelling press release, you don’t have a compelling product.

As Jeff Bezos put it: “We took it as an article of faith — if we served customers well, if we prioritized customers and delivered for them, things like sales, revenue, and free cash flow would follow.”

When to Use It

Use Working Backwards when you need to:

• Define a new product or major feature before committing resources
• Evaluate competing product ideas and choose which to build
• Align stakeholders on what you’re building and why
• Force clarity on vague product concepts
• Prevent building solutions in search of problems
• Create a shared vision that engineering, design, and leadership can rally around
• Decide whether an idea is worth pursuing at all

When Not to Use It

• The work is incremental optimization (A/B tests, bug fixes)
• You’re executing on an already-defined product
• The scope is too small to warrant the overhead

Resources

Books:

• Working Backwards by Bill Carr and Colin Bryar
• The Everything Store by Brad Stone